By J.J. Tindall
THE WORD LISTEN
I am the word listen.
I hear the river
And I hear the expressway.
Neither is ever empty.
Posted on January 30, 2013
Chicagoetry: The Time Machine
By J.J. Tindall
THE TIME MACHINE
Behold a bird of diamonds:
a stylized falcon, the treasure
of Jeweler’s Row,
redolent of crow’s breath, lark skull
and jay tongue.
It soars sitting still
in a lockbox behind a gun safe,
a representation of a dream, something
of a ruse, like the storefronts
themselves there from Monroe
north to Washington.
Posted on January 11, 2013
Chicagoetry: More Than A Feeling
By J.J. Tindall
More Than a Feeling
Dude brought a rifle to school,
Naperville Central, 1978.
He was from India
and he wasn’t fitting in. His father
was a prominent physician
and they moved to town
late into our midst, he was maybe
a junior (Jesus! New Guy!).
Posted on December 29, 2012
Chicagoetry: Bird Of Prey
By J.J. Tindall
Bird of Prey
I won’t say
I’m no longer a child but
I am not the child
I used to be.
Posted on November 26, 2012
Chicagoetry: Like A Western Avenue Along Saturn’s Icy Ring
By J.J. Tindall
Like a Western Avenue Along Saturn’s Icy Ring
A warm, dry place
here on the frozen edge
of an apparently infinite universe? Really?!
Wait: yes.
A warm, dry place here in America, like.
This kind of thing.
Posted on November 21, 2012
Chicagoetry: Mercury In Retrograde
By J.J. Tindall
MERCURY IN RETROGRADE
Heart full of dew
and cinemas;
the contraption of memory
clattering;
autumn leaves turn to gems
and gazelles.
Under-appreciated oak and elm
transmogrify into blazing festivals
and suburban lanes
become shattered rainbows.
Posted on October 18, 2012
Chicagoetry: Whey Lion In A Glade
By J.J. Tindall
Whey Lion in a Glade
I keep seeing this thing.
A lion in apparent repose
in the gold dusk
leering with rage.
A lion surveying a bay
from a dune,
Posted on September 21, 2012
Chicagoetry: How Everywhere She Is
By J.J. Tindall
How Everywhere She Is
How everywhere she is:
in the brittle trill of cicadas,
each with claves, sound
swirling like a flock of wooden blackbirds,
the sharp, black whoosh of the Blue Line–
Posted on August 29, 2012
Chicagoetry: Groovy Times
By J.J. Tindall
Groovy Times
My favorite nanosecond every year
is the instant the goddam blowtorch breaks
and I can smell the first quarks of autumn.
The boiling blazes seem like forever
as they confound, conflate and constrict
from Memorial Day pretty much
through Lollapalooza.
You find yourself dazedly digging trenches
in your mind for a perpetual siege,
acceding to a scorched forever
and then the goddam blowtorch breaks.
Posted on August 11, 2012
Chicagoetry: Red Wing, Yellow Sin
By J.J. Tindall
Red Wing, Yellow Sin
A red-winged blackbird
landed at my picnic table
at Navy Pier
opening a great lake
in my turbulent mind.
Yes: my mind landed
on this picnic table at Navy Pier
for a cig break
Posted on July 18, 2012