From Portside Culture <[email protected]>
Subject Three Flats
Date October 19, 2019 12:00 AM
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[ Mississippi poet Philip C. Kolin traces the evolution of his
childhood neighborhood in Chicago that went from Czech to Hispanic. ]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THREE FLATS   [[link removed]]

 

Philip C. Kolin

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_ Mississippi poet Philip C. Kolin traces the evolution of his
childhood neighborhood in Chicago that went from Czech to Hispanic. _

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Three Flats

By Philip C. Kolin

A hundred years ago, Czech immigrants

constructed these three flats, row

after row, on Chicago's west side in the shadow

of San Pio's companario

where God now weeps over

the wounds of Hispanic residents.

These flats remain a refuge

from the gangways and abandoned

houses, darkened streets, and empty lots

filling up with slashed bodies and closed

coffins. This is a world that murders prayer.

Yet large kitchen windows and ledges

give los ninos a chance to watch angels

as they pilgrimage across 

a sky as blue as the Senora's cape.

And when an icy raid in the middle

of the night threatens to deport

dreamers to chain-link prisions

in Texas, these three flats offer them

the sanctuary of the city.

Some say that Czech ghosts still live there

singing Mi Gente with Slavic

accents echoing from basements

to attics.

Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus)
and editor emeritus of  the Southern Quarterly at the Univ. of
Southern Mississippi. He has published nine collections of poems,
including Emmett Till in Different States (Third World Press, 2015)
and Reaching Forever: Poems (Cascade Books; Poiema Series, 2019). 

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