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      September 2, 2011Tavern. Tavern. Church. Shuttered Tavern,Patricia Smith

      then Goldblatt’s, with its finger-smeared display windows full
      of stifled plaid pinafore and hard-tailored serge, each unattainable
      thread cooing the delayed lusciousness of layaway, another church

       

       

      then, of course, Jesus pitchin’ a blustery bitch on every other block,
      then the butcher shop with, inexplicably, the blanched, archaic head
      of a hog propped upright to lure waffling patrons into the steamy

       

       

      innards of yet another storefront, where they drag their feet through
      sawdust and revel in the come-hither bouquet of blood, then a vacant
      lot, then another vacant lot, right up against a shoe store specializing

       

       

      in unyielding leather, All-Stars and glittered stacked heels designed
      for the Christian woman daring the jukebox, then the what-not joint,
      with vanilla-iced long johns, wax lips crammed with sugar water,

       

       

      notebook paper, swollen sour pickles buoyant in a splintered barrel,
      school supplies, Pixy Stix, licorice whips and vaguely warped 45s
      by Fontella Bass or Johnny Taylor, now oooh, what’s that blue pepper

       

       

      piercing the air with the nouns of backwood and cheap Delta cuts—
      neck and gizzard, skin and claw—it’s the chicken shack, wobbling
      on a foundation of board, grease riding relentless on three of its walls,

       

       

      the slick cuisine served up in virgin white cardboard boxes with Tabasco
      nibbling the seams, scorched wings under soaked slices of Wonder,
      blind perch fried limp, spiced like a mistake Mississippi don’ made,

       

       

      and speaking of, July moans around a perfect perfumed tangle of eight
      Baptist gals on the corner of Madison and Warren, fanning themselves
      with their own impending funerals, fluid-filled ankles like tree trunks

       

       

      sprouting from narrow slingbacks, choking in Sears’ Best cinnamon-tinged
      hose, their legs so unlike their arms and faces, on the other side
      of the street is everything they are trying to be beyond, everything

       

       

      they are trying to ignore, the grayed promise of government, 25 floors
      of lying windows, of peeling grates called balconies, of yellow panties
      and shredded diapers fluttering from open windows, of them nasty girls

       

       

      with wide avenue hips stomping doubledutch in the concrete courtyard,
      spewing their woman verses, too fueled and irreversible to be not
      listened to and wiggled against, and the Madison St. bus revs its tired

       

       

      engine, backs up a little for traction and drives smoothly into the sweaty
      space between their legs, the only route out of the day we’re riding through.

      from #34 - Winter 2010

      Patricia Smith

      “As a kid growing up on the west side of Chicago, my ideas about life and love were pretty much defined by whatever Motown song was out at the moment. I began working on a manuscript about the formidable sway Motown music held over me, which was particularly timely because the label had just celebrated its 50th anniversary. In the midst of crafting the book, however, I realized that what I was really writing about was being part of that first confounded generation born in cluttered, segregated northern cities after our parents had migrated from Alabama, from Mississippi, from Arkansas, from Louisiana. We began an urban existence with no real guidance—and music, among other things, raised us. ‘Tavern. Tavern. Church. Shuttered tavern,’ chronicles a bus ride down Madison St., the main strip slicing through Chicago’s west side. The street, the center of the community’s commerce, was burned flat during the riots following Martin Luther King’s assassination, and was only rebuilt years later when white folks realized its proximity to downtown, and therefore its worth.”

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