Benjamin Goluboff

Bronzeville Manifests in the Studio as Moe Asch Records Gwendolyn Brooks Reading “Kitchenette Building,” 1954

A Buick Skylark, robin’s-egg blue, 

rolled up to Moe’s console

and out of its open windows, 

along with some pungent smoke,

came a track in stop-time arrangement:

the latest thing from Chess Records. 

Kids were yelling something like, 

“Snatch it back and hold it,”

or yelling whatever kids were yelling

at 31st and Prairie at that particular time. 

Little girl come off 

the playground slide funny,

skinned the heel of her hand,

and ran home crying.

Benjamin Goluboff teaches at Lake Forest College. He is the author of Ho Chi Minh: A Speculative Life in Verse and Biking Englewood: An Essay on the White Gaze, both from Urban Farmhouse Press. Some of his work can be read at https://www.lakeforest.edu/academics/faculty/goluboff/.