Randall Horton

because a box is a box: humans are cultivated into said box without choice or clarification, specimens only existing—as in: (you—i—us). flesh & frame— restricted bone matter comprising a box reluctant not to be a box. but nurtured inside the box, let’s say form which is shaped by & indigenous, to, the box & the creator of the holy box—only leading to another question about, of course, the infamous box—form turns deceitful inside the box like any [thing] caged, leaning to a non-empathetic approach steeped in revolt —is judas in waiting. note: the box is not universal nor the universal. whatever hopes of otherworldliness lies in the box itself. the box will not elongate, dissolve or vanish without reaction to an action & here within lies problem of perspective as in—there is none—zero. along time’s continuum, color, too, is encouraged for the sake of the construction of the box, which is precious as flickering light, but cannot be verified since darkness is the original concept of all things human.

chicago: city of ice-cold wind — elbow city of the rectangular block, where bigger thomas choked mary dalton in a drunken stupor on cottage grove, that great avenue divider between the haves & have-nots, where my uncle sydney fled after escaping an alabama chain gang a quarter after midnight &, consequently, cleaved the tennessee river (shackles & all) into another state of freedom. chicago: home of the case pocketknife, the nickel-plated snub nose, the banana-suit wearer, gold tooth & all. they migrated from alabama red dirt, from arkansas cotton fields bowlegged & pigeon-toed, & if you’ve ever resided on the west side, then you might as well been living in lil’ mississippi: natchez, vicksburg, grenada, yazoo city, booneville. chicago: home of the winding el, the circling loop, the midnight cruise down lake shore from hyde park straight to buddy guy’s 
legends; all them blues in one locale. the one-night stands the city gives you — the identity it injects then sucks from your marrow; the lives gunned down. chicago: where gwendolyn brooks scribed In the Mecca featuring 
pepita, our tragic protagonist: assaulted, murdered & forgotten by blue lives matter in ’68 & today nothing has changed. chicago: come sit in the corrupted light.

locate the closest overlooked neighborhood — at its core extract all humans living underneath life’s bootheel. replace with millennials cradling postcolonial guilt, but not. ignore the woman’s cardboard [ help ] sign tattered, stained & broken like her: imagine being long-ago unseen, erased in between the throng, an existing non-entity. ask, too, if gun be an instrument what refrain whizzed soundless amid crestfallen shadows lingering a decade. go from “a to z” to list the dead — too many to name, but try: antoine, byrd, carlos, delante ... no deader now than then. still a memory real, cold steel, shots fired — death, what did we know of dying? don’t forget love, a love strangling addicts caught in a docetic whirlwind with no blue sail. before the corner becomes distorted remember: one more time inhale deep. inhale memory to include the bad & terrible beauty just beneath the living.