Bubbly Creek

The site is real. A fork of the Chicago River, dug as part of the engineering project that made the river flow backward. The witness grew up on the South Side, close enough to know the smell. "They were born about an hour from the depths of hell / Tattered minds, tattered goals, and the summer smell."

For nearly a century the stockyards emptied into it. Blood, fat, offal. The water went thick and lost its oxygen. Anyone pulled under could catch in the debris and never surface. "Don't tell me you haven't noticed / Meat doesn't rot without oxygen."

The creek was named for what it did. Every summer, gas from the bottom broke the surface. Nothing buried there stayed buried. "Bubble up to become unstuck." "Buckets of blood run warm down the river."

In the early 2000s the creek was cleaned up. Million-dollar homes went in along the shore. From the right angle it reads as recovery. "The light doesn't reach beneath the muck / Without changing who we are."

The basements flood. The cleanup was narrative. The rot persists. "Sink or swim, the choice is so thin."