Land of your broken birth
land of squared family circles
land of sweet home Chicago
land incognito
where men wear masks on Monroe Street
where women are the mannequins of
Michigan Avenue
where the hookers have all been chased down
and busted
where the fairies on Randolph Street fly
wingless into the electric night
where the Palmolive beacon like a
blind white bird is on a 500-mile flight
and arcing over Loop-demented
buildings
And you think about your swing-down thru
Canada (Ontario)
and you think about your sister in Ontario
(California)
10-years old wearing ballet slippers
coming on like a Degas dancer
All of which brings you back to your 1964
Illinois hometown
where North Shore suburban
summer trees turn the daylight savings sky
purple as license plates, along
Lakeshore Drive
And you think about your little sister
From: Crosswalk Casserole
Summary
“INNER BLUES ON THE OUTER DRIVE” by Michael C. Ford is a poem centered on place and geography, memory, family. Its imagery is anchored in Chicago, California. The poem develops its subject through recurring images and shifts in emotional pressure rather than reducing the experience to a single statement.
Analysis
Voice
The poem uses direct address, creating an intimate and sometimes confrontational relationship with its subject.
Style and form
The poem is line-driven, compressed. The poem moves by accumulation: images, references, and tonal turns build on one another, so meaning emerges from their relationships as much as from narrative sequence.
Themes and imagery
Its strongest thematic currents include place and geography, memory, family, aging. Concrete images give those abstractions physical weight, while changes in diction and pace keep the poem from settling into a single emotional register.
Reading the poem
A productive way to read “INNER BLUES ON THE OUTER DRIVE” is to watch how its images change function as the poem progresses. Details that initially establish scene or memory become emotional evidence. The result is a poem whose argument is carried through association, rhythm, and image as much as through explicit statement.
Explore this poem
Source & rights
Source: Crosswalk Casserole (Lawn Gnome Publishing, First Edition, 2013)
Rights: © 2013 Lawn Gnome Publishing. All rights reserved.