I just found this poem among some of my sister's papers. Usually I can read one of her poems and know the circumstances in which she wrote. However, this one is a mystery to me. My best guess is that she read the Stephen King novel, The Stand (one of our favorites) and then pictured her beloved Chicago under those conditions. We used to talk about events like that and her imagination was vivid - as vivid as when we were two small girls in St. James's Park.
the town changed after the
flu. the birth and death of stores came, and i, like a
soldier in the trench, giddy from gas
and bloated from weakness, saw
my buddies had died and had been
replaced by a fresh faced foreigner from
Pittsburgh.
i marveled at the new brick
that had housed smelly
pines at Christmas, near the Chinese restaurant around the
corner. the one i’d never been to. by
the time the plague left the bad deli
by the great lake that Harold Washington had liked
had been abandoned
and on the street of Thais
was a card shop which had
harlequin dolls. i collect dolls—death reposed in
porcelain and plastic;
coming alive only at night like the new town after
the flu. i like
death, but the red and blue pizza shop that is now
on the boulevard is
too much.
