Brendan Dabkowski is a graduate student in English Literature at NEIU, and he also serves as a graduate assistant. He works as an editor, writer and sometimes poet. His interests include listening to people share their ideas, helping you with your homework and knocking out the serial comma.

 Chicago has an Ocean

 The heart below the grassline

slices bagels into misshapen halves

all over the Midwestern map.

Up above, you spread synesthesia
like schmear over fresh snow.

Backwards. Downhill. Slushy.

Chicago has an Ocean.
A place where balloons rise,

drop their defenses. Tipple
themselves inside tiny black holes.

And the misshapen, like tiny
black holes, are themselves
swallowed up in the snow.

Chicago has an Ocean.

A place for you to hunker down,

unsteady yourself on waves.
Salt your cold breath, and
grind down the ghosts
that lock eyes with you
beneath your Sunday best.

Chicago has an Ocean.

Idle. White-capped. Feverish.

While smoothing my cowlick,

I spy decals of the Buddha

plastering the unhinged

backdoor of an ambulance
lighting out for home.

Chicago has an Ocean.

The crash scene confers
tropical temps. Slows up,
ices over again. Disrupted,

traffic tears up sod, flowing

like red wine reversing its course

back toward the heart.