Morgan Powell
Chicago II
About This Author
When I emerge from Millennium Station,
The cold goes through me like an icicle.
The buildings tower above me on all sides,
Diminishing me, making me small.
In Chicago, nobody looks at you,
Nobody smiles or says hello,
They stare instead at the pavement and their shoes,
But not the people around them who fill the space between.
I'm too trusting for Chicago, too naïve,
The roars and squeals of the trains grate on me,
The overpowering stench of rubber and body odor
Nauseates me, but I find myself loving it all anyway.
I want to navigate the streets: Congress,
Michigan, and Lake Shore Drive,
Let my feet beat a path along the lake to Navy Pier,
Let the wind whip my hair around my face.
I want Chicago, the lake view from a high window,
The unsettling motion of the train as I grip a cold,
Steadying bar of metal, I want the freedom
Of this city even as it stifles me
Morgan Powell (22nd November 1991-) is born in Covington, Indiana. She goes to Anderson University and majors in English and Writing. As an easily humored young lady, she laugh at literally everything. Powell’s concentration is mainly on fiction and short or novel-length writing, hence the narrative nature of the poem. Her desire is to get into graduate school for creative writing. She has a more fickle style of writing where she jumps around at ideas and writes down these ideas only to come back to them later in her writings. Listening to music relevant to whatever she decides to write about is her strategy to write better.