Hawk Hour

In this city time unwinds in unnatural ways. It doesn’t fly. It trips. It
passes in coughing fits. It doesn’t have enough soul to tick tock tick. It
spits and spews under the rusty fenders of all these cars going nowhere
fast. It’s bad for the body. Even here at the corner of Sheridan and
Pratt, the lake and its waves only a block away, I cannot measure my
own dying. Instead, this taxi pants at the traffic light. Instead, this bus,
the Outer Drive Express, lodges in my ventricle. Instead, this city
breaks my clock.
On my good leg I wobble between the I-pods wearing all those heads,
wearing the same 2.8 million faces. Some idiot calls this a river of
humanity but rivers don’t move like this. It’s not natural. I stagger past
the café that wasn’t here yesterday, won’t be here tomorrow. Past the
liquor store that will be here forever, lubricating the gears and all their
broken teeth. I lurch past the rows of trees. Gnarled sticks attacked by
choking leaves. I pause near the playlot, listen to the skippers and
skaters sing, the city is a meadow and the people are the sheep, the city
is a meadow and the people are the sheep. I grin. Below the Red Line
tracks a squad car screams up against the wall to people already up
against the wall. I give away a dollar to a man who says, god bless, cuz
he does not know god has nothing to do with my dollar.
In Loyola Station I give more money to the turnstile. It says nothing as
I catch the current. I crawl up the escalator, 90 miles per hour, swivel
to the end of the platform at 95. There I linger in a shadow that drapes
itself across my eyes. I catch my breath, I stand upright. Above me the
shape of a hawk drowns out the rush of the next ten trains and with its
beating wings reaches out to stop the sky.