One Hundred Thousand Voices—Edit
Okay, so I am submitting this poem for publication tonight. This is the final version and any last mintue critique is encouraged:
One Hundred Thousand Voices
On the eve of the Presidential Election, 2008.
Chicago, a museum of modern art.
I view it, my gaze
smooth like the bellies of toads
that hop
skip
jump
across ocean,
and highway
then grow to the size of Sears Tower.
It looks like I did when I was little.
Not only that,
but it looks like baby’s first smile.
You alone
can’t scratch that itch
but there is someone who can help you,
and it will feel like chalk on sidewalks
proclaiming messages of what you should do, and who.
But head held high
each skyscraper was a carrot
growing out of ground like opposite roots
that taste like sky
and vodka in the rain.
I hear the roar of 100,000 voices
in my neighborhood alone.
Ripping open their chests,
letting their organs soar
like the soles of shoes
in the act of dancing.
I wasn’t in Chicago the day
it turned into a museum, art
represented with little to everything;
the colors of anything
you find in a children’s bookstore.
