Illinois Abe Lincoln’s Hat

blacks painted onto bricks & split vinyl on the East Side, jaws as tight as window locks with the curtains drawn & behind that diligent fabric: blacks already tucked into homemade forts—folding chairs, wobbly backbones & the whole, snowy world waiting outside like ghost stories whispered around the last sputtering match. & later, top sheets pulled up over heads from fear of mirrors at midnight or some backfired beater’s rusty pop pop pop after the key twists at the edge of the week. No doubt: Tuesday is the scariest day in Section 8, but Friday is right after it in the suburbs. & after those trembling weekdays, even more blacks with money disappearing & reappearing as unexpectedly as poltergeists inside of TVs & haunted trees with fast fingers in West Side yards. & still not a wavelength of any kind for a black to put in the bank. The inks in everybody’s hatted & contracting checkbooks don’t change black. Some front-row architecture might. Some guns, too, & their loud, colorful opportunities: whatever version of black is inside a fist around a grip. Not a color, really—more like the face a man makes in the glinting face of a gun pointed at him every single day.