by Ola Faleti
Talking shit, like you know about cracked knuckles and flamin hots with pickle juice. Or the broken heat lamps on the El, or getting high off a lakefront. Yesterday, I counted every duck at the lake and called them my woes. By hook by crook by crooked alderman, you learn that the trap that stays shut is the trap that starves.
No one will beat or bite this place out of me. Not by the skin of their enameled teeth. Not by the potholes on every major street. Not by the 312. Not by the school closures. Not by the crack of a July thunder. Like being at The Taste and getting flooded by rain. All that muddy. All that moist. Like when you were little and other kids hit you, and your mom said to hit ‘em back.
Ola Faleti is the author of fiction chapbook Soft & Solid and an artist and arts educator based in Chicago, Illinois. Her writing has appeared in Unwoven, TriQuarterly, Jet Fuel Review, and elsewhere. She runs Spare Jar Consulting, a grant writing and creative facilitation business, and teaches with the Chicago Poetry Center. Ola’s favorite number is nine. She believes there’s no such thing as too many flowers.