This edition featured poets from diverse backgrounds and even wilder aesthetic camps meeting together under the—dare I write it?—big tent of LOCUSPOINT. Chicago’s been a good poetry city since Carl Sandburg wrote about the city with the big shoulders. It continues to be a thriving mecca for writers today and is home to at least two wonderful journals—Court Green and Columbia Poetry Review.
Here’s a poem from that edition by Paul Martinez Pompa called “How to Be Invisible”:
How to Be Invisible
Don’t be so damn obvious
she says after shoving a T-bone
down his pants. Express lane
12 items or less & his belly’s numb
& pink from the blood through
the saran. The boy’s scared. Of both
mom & the lady in a smock
who flings buy-one-get-one
non-perishables across the scanner.
He imagines an entire police
squadron waiting outside, ready
to pounce. As they exit, a fist
forms in his pocket tight enough
to squeeze the breath from someone.
