My Chicago Date Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

ANN - WAS THAT YOU?

In the Fall of 1976, I spent a month in Chicago
Working with Harza Overseas Engineering
Preparing the Agricultural Economics Analysis
For the Jordan Valley Irrigation Project, Stage II,
Having flown over from our London Office.
I stayed at the Midland Hotel,172 West Adams
Which apparently started as Beaux Arts
But stopped at 22 floors and switched to
Art Deco and Contemporary when the Crash came in 1929.
I was severely unimpressed by the CBD
As it emptied every evening, leaving canyons
Of windswept streets, and on one occasion
A plate glass window fell from way up the Sears Tower
Splintering on the sidewalk opposite from where
I used to pick up my tall cardboard carton
Of undistinguished percolated coffee and a doughnut
On my way to work in the mornings in South Wacker Drive.

Anyhow, the then monotonously dark-brown veneer hotel
Was a dreadfully boring place to be after I had
Finished up my evening meal at the Berghoff German Restaurant
And one evening I set out to explore its mysteries:
Finding one of the Great Rooms of the old Midland Club
Which had been hired for the night by an Afro-American
Community Group for a sort of sharing and giving talent show
That celebrated and affirmed the gifts and confidence
Of its young people. I asked if I could watch.
Which was a bit of a mistake for they generously said ‘yes'.
So there I was, the only white person in a vast room
Full of Black Americans who really wanted to be totally
Rid of Whites for the purposes of the exercise.
And disgustingly, I found myself looking for a response
From a fetching young woman who was notably whiter then the rest:
I thanked them and left - but they really should have thrown me out.

Later things looked up when I met a winsome lantern-jawed
Dark-haired young woman in a Singles Bar on the North Side.
On the lam from her work as an expat in Indonesia
She was attending a conference on micro-credit programs
At the University of Chicago. She told me that she had a
15-year-old son who had an African father from Kenya
And a 6-year-old daughter to her second failed marriage
To an Indonesian. Eighteen months older than me
She knew the ropes and was out for a good time -
Confiding after a second tray of slammers
That she had once posed for raunchy photographs
That were published in the soft-porn magazine Exotique.

Well, if you believe that, you'll believe anything
But then some do - and seemingly we are losing all conscience:
So stained, so insufficient, so lacking in decency -
Pumped up by sexism, racism and braggadocio.
The way things are going, it won't be long
Before a whiter shade of pale
Enhances the color of dishonor -
White-livered, white-feathered, white-washed -

And there are waiting lists for melanin injections.