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WWBCD What Would Billy Collins Do in Chicago?
Robert E. Wood teaches at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. His film studies include essays on Fosse, DePalma, and Verhoeven, as well as The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He is the author of Some Necessary Questions of the Play, a study of Hamlet. His poetry has appeared in such journals as Blue Fifth Review, Jabberwock Review, Sojourn, Minnetonka Review, and Prairie Schooner. His chapbook, Gorizia Notebook, was published by Finishing Line Press.
Wood
Probably not hike past the Water Tower that survived the Great Chicago Fire and the red engines flexing steel in the fire station a block away as if to say never again. Probably not stroll past a sleepy Bughouse Square noting the absence of fiery speakers watching a man in brown walk three leashed pugs past the orderly plots of flowers around the fountain. Probably not ride the clattering El where there is always a guy a little short of carfare when you look like you just arrived from somewhere out of town. Billy Collins tends to stay a little closer to home. His tough luck if he didn’t linger at the front desk of the motel chatting with two reception clerks who might be Salma Hayek’s only slightly less comely sisters. Maybe he’d venture as far as a window watching the man in the street who’s peddling Chicago Tribunes and dodging the skaters and taxis. Would he be miffed at the aging black and white tiles in the shower or be pleased at the toilet tissue folded to a tidy point so you know the room has been cleaned? Would he be sliding open a drawer in search of a sheet of paper or two for this poem? Billy Collins would stay at a better hotel.
Robert E.