The belly of the city swells with trains.
Stitched in her side the stockyards’ heartburn
carbonates the river’s throat.
She lifts her foxy dunes,
parades lakeside and stateside,
whores a little in the board of trade.
Her iron fingers pierce the yellow smog:
naked crosses, steel cigars
belching manna wholesale,
each finger warming its nail
in blackmarket sunshine.
Asphyxiated fish silver her breast.
Freeways spill a septic discharge.
Yet she dines with the wind, oblivious,
tossing a brassy laugh
over a welded shoulder.
The gulls pick and choose.
She blows a kiss of soot,
Chicago wheeling and swinging
her plundered hips,
tarnished but radiant,
whistling her own hosannas.
Author of MOON AND MERCURY (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 1990) and a chapbook, TROUBLED BY AN ANGEL (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1997), Elisabeth Murawski is a native of Chicago but has lived in the DC area since 1960. She works as a training specialist for the U.S. Census Bureau and has served as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University Washington Center and the University of Virginia Falls Church Center. She has received four grants from The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, NM and a partial fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center.
Publications include: THE YALE REVIEW, THE DUBLINER, THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW, GRAND STREET, DOUBLETAKE, FIELD, THE LITERARY REVIEW, CRAZYHORSE, THE AMERICAN VOICE, AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW, POETRY NORTHWEST, THE OHIO REVIEW, SHENANDOAH, et al.