Lake Michigan, Scene 9

Do you want to see the waters that in the sunlight reminded Simone de Beauvoir of silk and
flashing diamonds

Do you want to see the golden sand of Lake Michigan

Do you want to see the waters that are like silk and flashing diamonds

Do you want to see the seagulls flying over the lake

Do you want to see the authoritative bodies standing on the pier under a banner that reads –
Policia

Come, watch the police remove the homeless bodies from the beach

Come, watch the police beat the mentally ill people on the beach

There are no public mental health facilities to take them to anymore

So the police beat the mentally ill with nightsticks     kick them in the face      in the back in the
skull then handcuff them and take them to jail

O international observers      why do you look away when the homeless bodies are beaten by
the police

O international observers      this weekend the police murdered two more people in the squalor
of the streets      in the squalor of our human wreckage

O international observers      why do you discuss the water-borne domestic sewage discharged
into the lake by the workers from the Department of Streets and Sanitation when you could be
discussing the bodies that the Chicago Police Department tossed into the middle of Lake
Michigan when they ran out of room at the morgue

O international observers      have you come to Chicago to see the beautiful birds that fly
above our beaches

Montrose Harbor on the North Side of Chicago is a mecca for birdwatchers

At least 343 species have been spotted there in the past two years including a staggering
variety of rarities and vagrants

It’s an excellent place to observe migration because of its habitat diversity      location along a
natural corridor for migrants      and the fact that Montrose Point protrudes well into Lake
Michigan

It’s a quiet haven for watching birds and butterflies and you can even see the great Chicago
skyline in the distance

Have you seen the Pacific Loon      the Magnificent Frigatebird      the Reddish Egret      the
Barrow's Goldeneye      the Mottled Duck      the Swainson's Hawk      the Black Rail      the
Wandering Tattler      the Sandwich Tern      the Burrowing Owl      the Groove-billed Ani      the
Ash-throated Flycatcher      the Rock Wren      the Sage Thrasher      the Townsend's Solitaire
the Townsend's Warbler      the Golden-crowned Sparrow      the Painted Bunting or the
Eurasian Tree Sparrow

We are lucky to live in a city where we can see so many splendid birds

However      it is quite unfortunate to witness what the scavenging bodies have done to the
Eurasian Tree Sparrow with its black patches on its white cheeks

The authoritative bodies claim this bird is a mongrel

Nature      claim the authoritative bodies in their manuals      is not benevolent in its assignation of
color

What the fuck is a Eurasian      the Chicago Police Department wants to know

We can tolerate neither birds nor humans produced by multiple continents says the Mayor
from his home in the Ravenswood neighborhood of Chicago

The mayor’s office makes a list of citizens with hybridized identities and rounds them up

It’s not so hard to stop any body you want if you are a police officer in Chicago

All you need to do is say you suspect it possesses illegal drugs

After that you can basically lock a body up forever

They blindfold the bodies and bind them to cages or trees

They pepper the bodies with questions

What does the darkness look like      they ask

How is this darkness different from all other darknesses

O international observers      do you want to see the authoritative bodies commanding the
scavenging bodies to eat the raw flesh of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow

Do you want to see the carcasses of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow tossed into the lake and chased
down by the scavengers

Do you want to see the 360 refugees removed from their tent camps on the beaches just east of
the Hancock Tower

Do you want to see the refugees taken to the Social Housing Facilities that have been
established for the refugees and the mentally ill on the northern beaches of Chicago

Although the migrants have made arduous journeys from Central America      they have little
chance of finding jobs or securing asylum here in Chicago

By contrast      they have an excellent chance of being arrested      detained or murdered by the
police or their henchmen

Do you want to see the soldiers with machine guns strapped in front of their chests as they
escort the refugees onto yellow school buses

The international observers don’t feel like seeing anything today

Their local escorts take them to Starbucks where they buy fruit smoothies and protein bistro
boxes so they can enjoy a healthy snack here on the crystalline shores of Lake Michigan

They do not want to see the authoritative bodies force the refugees to shoot the warblers with
their yellow faces      with the black stripes across their cheeks extending into their ear patch
with their thin pointed bills      their two white wings      their olive upper parts with the black
streaks on their backs and flanks      their white bellies

The authoritative bodies don’t like that these birds have so many colors

These birds belong in the coniferous forests of the Northwest United States and not on the
urban beaches of Chicago

They don’t like these nomadic birds just as they don’t like the refugees from Central America

In the next fiscal year the bureaucrats will write a line in the budget to make the birds
disappear

They will make the nomadic birds and the refugees disappear forever into the murmuring darkness
of this interminable carcass night

 
Daniel Borzutzky

Daniel Borzutzky's poetry collection Lake Michigan is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Borzutzky won the 2016 National Book Award in Poetry for The Performance of Becoming Human. His other books include In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy, Memories of my Overdevelopment, and The Book of Interfering Bodies. His translation of Galo Ghigliotto's Valdivia won the 2017 National Translation Award. He has also translated Raúl Zurita’s The Country of Planks and Song for His Disappeared Love, and Jaime Luis Huenún’s Port Trakl (2008). His work has been supported by the Illinois Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pen/Heim Translation Fund. He lives in Chicago.

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Five Descants from a Violent Species

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Lake Michigan, Scene 11