A Few Cards Short
Wicker Park. October, 2008
They slap their hands
on chess board-topped tables.
Sit hard like their cupped concrete
chairs. Play spades, spitting
insults and stories like cards. Sal
recalls his crooked hand: his corner
store turned ash and broken
glass by neighborhood thugs
or the police or his cheating ex-
wife. He sucks his square and puffs.
Stares at the smoke like it’s a ladder
of black aces. Manny shuffles
five years back-- set fire to his car
for the insurance, but a bitter bitch
neighbor ratted him out. Lost
his house a year before wrecking
ball sucker-punched its lights
out. Angel smacks the cards
to the ground. High steps away,
knees punching the air like knuckles,
spewing snot and spit and gibberish.
He’s made this park and Pacific Garden
Missions his home for fourteen years.
Talks crazy to himself. Gets black-eyed
and nose-bloodied by hot-blooded bullies
who don’t like his lip. He was once
a lawyer or a Jaguar dealer or a history
professor or a comedian or a mayor
of a town way down south. His right
hand’s broken. He can’t deal.
--Peter Kahn
Peter Kahn was a finalist in the 2006 Fugue Poetry Contest and the 2008 Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry. A founding member of Malika’s Kitchen, he has an MA in English Education and teaches in Chicago and London.