Sam Pink
Yesterday I was walking around Pilsen Neighborhood, in Chicago, and I went beneath a small overpass. There were crowns graffiti’d upside down on the walls and a man sleeping on the slope of the overpass’s underside, with four milk jugs lined up him, and a shopping cart. On the other side of the overpass, the bushes along the sidewalk started shaking. A city worker in a neon yellow vest and badge came out of the bushes. She wore a small sweaty baseball hat and wiped her face with the shoulder of her neon yellow vest. She held big clippers, a handle in each hand. Without looking at me, she said, “This be how they get you. Jumping out from a bush atcha.” And I said, “Yeah” like, “sadly, yeah” like I knew that that was how they get you. But, I did not know that was how they get you. The city worker whistled one quick note and kept clipping.
Sam Pink is the author of The No Hellos Diet, Hurt Others, Person, The Self-Esteem Holocaust Comes Home, Frowns Need Friends Too, I Am Going To Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat It, Rontel, and The Collected Suicide Notes, a poetry collection forthcoming from Lazy Fascist Press. He lives in Chicago where he breeds ghost horses and prepares for his championship bout with Sammy “Thousand-Eyed Darkness” Fitzsimmons in the Limbo Dome.