at the end of that summer
we went to Chicago
drove up from Springfield
in your olive Ford Probe
stayed at the Carpenter House Hilton
if you’re a poet in Illinois, you told me,
you have to do open-mic at the Green Mill
I did not read, but Mark Smith
left me a great appreciation
for Carl Sandberg, reciting from rote
The Right to Grief
even here, twenty-odd years later
I am reading Chicago Poems
thinking of the Navy Peir
that literary vest I purchased
with the seam taking the space
between ‘pen’ and ‘is’ in the idiom
‘the pen is mightier than the sword’
that morning we left – the walk on Michigan
we woke to What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor
hungover a bit or more until sobered
by the reason traffic was so heavy
down to the British consulate – where
we first saw the headline:
Lady Di Killed in Race with Paparazzi.

dm pitchford 12/23/23