American Necropolis # 4
Where to Eat: All that’s cooked here is a local concoction of fermented greens and rusted water tanks. Everything carries the hint of the exotic charcoals produced decades back. In recent years, chefs have gone for a study of the local salts—although this study is carried on at a distance. No one walks the riverside in search of froth or follows deer into the woods on Stagg Isle. You’ll have trouble finding specialties that aren’t encrusted with the previous century’s residue. The Impala is world-renowned for its view of the city. “Gothic,” one
reviewer recently wrote, giving the restaurant four *’s. Stay away from the “exotic local vegetation” section on their menu. Otherwise a few local fish dominate the city’s bills of fare—look for them steaming in the aluminum carts pushed by the dead along the city’s riverfront. Where to Stay: It was in this city that the previous century was last seen alive. That century is celebrated each night in the sliver of garden between the city’s two principal hotels, the Hotel St. Pierre (three *’s; avoid the “happy hour”) and the Hotel Meridien (three-and-a-half *’s; avoid the “modern wing”). Each night, the hotels’ guests engage in conversation well into the night in the thin courtyard. “Antiquary sex” is a popular topic, we’re told. It was in the Meridien‘s bar that the original plot was hatched to undo the city’s intricate canal system and return the city to its swamps. The dead will happily engage you in conversation for a small fee. Neither hotel provides adequate television reception. Nightlife: Put a guitar in your hands and a banjo in your head and your voice joins the dead in their plastic chorus. Certain booms have been heard through the glass, but that is just static in the speakers, a non-com sound system stolen and set-up by veterans of the Great Metallic War. They’ve been engaged in taking apart the emperor’s music piece by piece
in this town for quite awhile now; tourists come to hear it done nightly over cut- rate cocktails and beer smuggled across the northern border. The jazz that’s played here is suburban and underground. Its waters don’t run in this place, its horn-players’ ears are tuned to distance. “Stop listening,” the old-timers tell them. “You’ll never know those waters. Take the horn out of the dead man’s mouth.” Although, as one critic writes, the dead have begun to tutor them in these rivers. “The emperor’s rivers,” he writes, “are never as full as they seem. Recalling the dead, these recent sounds can bring the waters back to life.” The question here is whether you’re willing to join the conspiracy or not.
PoetsArtists Chicago Issue 2012 ~
www.poetsandartists.com
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