A city in heaven

Soprano’s words pearls the soft sheen summer evening

Off under the undertow depth charges blonde the currents
Everybody everybody dance   at least flap wings and sky
Outer limits slum dwellers calculate the whisk of broom
And coins platter the sidewalks all cheap all cheap
Stranded here like immigrants streets of gold undiscovered
Black men from Mississippi walk Chicago’s byways
There is heaven somewhere in those pearls around the white
Lady’s neck, but on earth, the shit fouls the air
Streets this mean are so conventional like a gangster’s tip
or the striped bass with pearl onions at the faux elegant restaurant.
Where voices ring the Gothic ceiling’s cross beams
Angels flock invisible and useless–their wings solemn.
Their arms open only to air.

Patricia Spears Jones is a poet and playwright. Her books are The Weather That Kills, from Coffee House Press, Femme du Monde, and most recently Painkiller, both from Tia Chucha Press.

*Photo courtesy of smik67.