Chicago Transplant
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Chicago Transplant
Home is not only my mother,it's also, I, the dark city.It's the kitchen,and scraping the ovenbottomwith a knifein a dishrag. It's calfmuscles pulsing and mewith my same bent spine.
Chicago cold rivalsmy first skin senseof home—those Houstonhundreds, it's sky and flood.
I know it's homeif I'm always trying to leave,if my dead slept in it,if I know whose headleft blood on the sidewalk,if it can be taken away. [End Page 108]
MAYA MARSHALL, an editor and a poet who has held fellowships with Callaloo and Cave Canem, is co-founder of the website underbellymag.com and a senior editor of [PANK]. Secondhand, her first chapbook, was published by Dancing Girl Press (2016). Marshall completed her MFA at the University of South Carolina, and her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in RHINO, Potomac Review, Quiet Lunch, and Blackbird.
