“Chicago Transit 1924,” “Illinois,” and “Diversey & Lakewood”

three poems by EMORY BRIGDEN

Chicago Transit 1924

I saw her on a smoker car
lurching around this lakeside loop.
Feline, she flirted with a nap,
leaving little piles of ash
on her secretary skirt
and lipstick on the smoked-down butt.
Then she got off at Madison,
somnambulating down the stairs
to one of those new, haughty towers,
a sacred, skyward-straining temple,
in whose secret mysteries
I am no initiate.
Alone, I made my transfer south.
At work all through the goddamn day,
removing hides from hairy hogs,
I wished I could—no, I pretended
I took off her blouse instead.

Illinois

State sovereignty and national union— 
the prairie gone, still here communion.

Diversey & Lakewood 

She’s an inviting alley with no outlet. 
You have to leave the way that you came in.