Chicago
city of working men
of bustling factories
and billowing smoke-stacks

tattooed with graffiti
filled with hearty, loud people
who are constantly going,
building, moving upwards

it is unlike Atlanta, my home,
because she is a conflicted soul,
subsisting for so long in tradition
and now she sits on the brink
of modernity, and cannot decide
to jump in

this city knows who he is
and though I might not know
who that is, I feel its confidence

in the noisy cabbies honking horns,
in the rickety trains on their tracks,
in the million different faces I’ve seen
already, I can see a bold identity

something I cannot claim,
and I will wander on without
forever