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POETRY

“Chicago vespers,” read by Patrick T. Reardon.

Chicago vespers

I hear, in the sparrow’s hollow bone, Chicago vespers.
In cool high-ceiling silence, the dark church,
a wordless psalm.

I shave my head to cipher myself,
join the lost tribes’ pilgrimage in the barrio.

Woe the bully boy. Woe the
white-collar sneak thief.
Pain displayed.

Leaf, branch, bark, silent as stone. 

Scream taboo.
Scream heresy.
Scream betrayal, violation, failure.
Scream bloody murder.
Scream despair, misery, abandon.
Scream.
 
The fall of snow
on the communion of saints,
processing cracked Clark Street sidewalks,
water, wine, chrism.
 
Eye lash, ear lobe,
molar, fingerprint, the flesh of the lung.

Mozart and the others, sons of God,
order in chaos,
door opened and closed.
 
At the street corner,
a monastic in his cell, blank ecstasy.

The Red Line el train,
prayer wheels in the dark.

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“Dirge,” read by Patrick T. Reardon.

Dirge

The tall man threw the spear
at the singer boy, and threw it
again, and threw it later at his
own son. And, later still, saw
the spear in the singer boy’s hands
on the morning-sun hilltop,
stolen out of the tent where
the tall man slept untouched.

The tall man danced madly
to the music in his skull. The
tall man danced madly to the
ghostwife music. Naked.

He danced his dread,
small he was in his own eyes.

On his own sword, he fell.

His body was hung upside down,
then riven into parts, bloody
butchered. Buried in deep night.

The singer boy keened a dirge
for form’s sake.

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Patrick T. Reardon is the author of fourteen books, including the poetry collections Requiem for David, Darkness on the Face of the Deep, The Lost Tribes, Let the Baby Sleep, Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby, A Memoir in Prose Poems and Salt of the Earth: Doubts and Faith.

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Artwork: Chicago, the Heart of Chicago (Evening) by Donald Shaw MacLaughlan. Public Domain.