Untitled Document

The Circus is Coming

I didn't put it together,
the news story about the
historic black church that
had burned completely out
in the middle of the night
and that stolid sandstone building
on my bike route to work
until the next morning, when I
had to wend my way around the
traffic barricade.

The smell of charred wood
clung persistently to the heavy
wet November air -- mingled with
the rotting leaves, it almost smelled
like incense. Arson team the first day,
a ring of tearful, prayerful singers
holding hands, keeping vigil that night.
Entire building shrouded in a white tarp
the next day to shield any relics that
weren't burned beyond salvation
from the rain, from the smouldering hatred.

The cranes came and tore the stone shell
down in what seemed like a terrific hurry.
Clear away the detritus, remove the evidence,
get traffic back on the road, business back to usual.
Besides -- the circus is coming.

The United Center soars up out of
the pavement on the kitty corner,
unnervingly unreal in its palatial splendor
in the midst of ghetto-blasted squalor.
More movie set than building,
a swath of surface parking
surrounded by glittering chain link fence
setting it pristinely off from its HUD neighbors.

Bulls games and post-victory riots,
rock concerts with mosh pits that spill into the streets,
and now the circus is coming.
With lions prowling uneasily in cages with
gleaming silver bars in the tents that have
mushroomed in the parking lot.
With tigers that sit on their
silver pedestals in the center ring
under the big top, watching and waiting
for their handler to make one wrong move.
With elephants that lumber placidly along,
trunk to tail, trunk to tail . . .

Gina Buccola, 1999

Illustration by Steven Vick