34th and Bell ain’t no diving ground; these 
folks don’t owe you their modest homes. People 
love cheap property, and they love to walk 
their pure-bred dogs looking for their 
next investment. The grass is golden 
dipped and hydrangeas gleam in gardens 
they plant in their escrow accounts. I even 
like the sparkle-spun superstore and the 
micro-roast coffee shop when summer leaves, 
and I crave pumpkin spice fall. 
But the upward mobility I swig down 
won’t save me. They’ll bury me deep in 
new rubble and say I look lovelier 
than when I was alive. My bone patterns 
will build their foundations—right here. 

with two lines from Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “Beverly Hills, Chicago”