Neal Pollack

Just before the dark closes in on me again, I’m laughing on the inside, cuz we all four ended up in this pit here, all four headed underground no matter what other plans they had. And I’m also laughing cuz when anybody, Blue maybe, come looking to find one uncle, one ghost, and two gangstas, all they gonna find themselves is four ghosts, surprise surprise. Like to see them try to figure this one out.

Still can’t form no words, but in my mind I’m saying, Don’t you worry, Blue, you be in here soon enough.

And now that I finish thinking all these last thoughts, weak as I ever been in my whole idiot life, heading into the darkness again, all I can think to add is four more silent little words in my grave in the big, bad Southside, not one mile from the place where I was born: Goodnight, Chicago, and amen.

THE GOSPEL OF MORAL ENDS

BY BAYO OJIKUTU

77th & Jeffery

Swear I’m trying to keep up with Reverend this morning. Ain’t so easy, not with the black angels crooning at his back, alleluia, and these amens rising in flocks from the Mount’s bloody red carpet and gleaming pews, and the Payless heels square stomping up above my head until Calvary’s balcony rocks in rhythm with the charcoal drum sergeant’s skins. Seems the flock understands his sermon mighty fine, else why would they make all such noise in Mount Calvary? It’s me then. I am the lost.

“Today is a good day, Church. Ain’t it, Church? Always a good day for fellowshipping in the community of the Lord God, ain’t it?”

The woman leaning on her walking stick across the aisle echoes loud as the speaker box boom.

“Amen!”

“We come in here on this good day looking for the righteous way to serve Him to bring manifest—y’all like that word, Church, that’s a good word—let me say it again. We come in here to bring man-i-fest His glory in a world gone wicked, Church. We got this here fine church built on a mount—and we call it Calvary, like that hilltop where the Lord God sent His One Son to hang from a cross for us and save us from sin, deliver us from black death, Church. Make me so happy when I talk bout how the Savior came to this world to sacrifice His life for us, so happy, Church, all so we could come back here to the hilltop and build up a palace that’d shine bright in His city, so all would know. But all still ain’t here celebrating the Good News, Church—no matter how loud I speak it, y’all sing it, and no matter the blazing beauty of this here Mount Calvary. City’s wicked, Church, so wicked; we got folk look like us, talk like us, breath like us out here. But them folk is confused, Church, lost out in concrete Gomorrah. Y’all know too much about that place already. That’s right, the wicked place right outside the oak doors to our Mount Calvary. Right down there on 79th Street, where sin whirls among folk blind to the Good News.”

Maybe my trouble understanding Reverend Jack comes from these tiny ears, a quarter of the space the Good Lord carved on either side of my head for hearing. Or maybe confusion comes from eyes gone pus-yellow driving Sunday sunrise fares out to the good places north, south, and west; far, far from the wicked, whirling city and never back into concrete Gomorrah a moment before 7 o’clock the following Saturday night.

Or maybe I’m carrying the soul of a Black Jew up inside me. Not like the one-eyed Candy Man, or the musty shysters on the corner of State and Madison, their nappy heads hid underneath unraveling crochet hats. Sammy Davis was a happy half-monkey/half-rat, and the zero corner hustlers call themselves “Ethiopian Hebrews,” selling their stinky incense sticks. I know I ain’t no chimp dancing on a music box or no rat running into corners, or no shyster either. Ain’t looking to get down with no big-boned Swedish honeys or start no funky sweet revolution. Just getting hold of this preacher’s babble before salvation passes me by, trying to—Black Jews, you see, don’t sing or dance God or shout alleluia in the temple. We read holy script in quiet. That way, we understand what the rabbi’s spewing. We Black Jews get to know what the sermon means, Church.

My religion would explain this Scandinavian wanderer’s nose misplaced on my Down-Deep-in-the-field face. I smell from it plenty good, better had what with this crooked beak jabbing from my head, stabbing and jabbing at the rearview mirror reflection as I pull on seeing holes to explore my rot. The nose’s tip hooks down like those of the old olive diamond hawks underneath the tracks on Wabash Avenue, except that nostrils gape wide and jungle-black where cheeks meet. I breathe the stank of the Lord Jesus’ celebration: this funk of salt, Walgreens makeup counter product, relaxer lye, and air panted from deep in guts filled with only starvation and desperation. Smelling lets my beak know something’s ill in the reverend’s Sunday spiel, and that knowledge means trouble on the Mount.