Portside

Eden in Pilsen

By Philip C. Kolin

At the turn of the 20th Century Czech immigrants flocked to the Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen on the city's near west side attracted there by the offer of jobs.

The new world they searched for in Pilsen
squeezed them onto lots,
20 by 95 feet long,
a bungalow to birth a family of nine,
a three flat close enough on hot summer nights
to reach out and touch the melting tar
on the flat roof of the building next door.
The air moaned it had no place to go.
No place for anything green.
Here is where they looked for paradise.

But Pilsen offered a bruised promise of work.
Breweries steadily steamed throughout the day
hiring starving men who lived less
than two blocks away; malt, oats, hops--
the bitter air of winter smelled
like a drunkard's breath. With each new snowfall
a batch of Bock beer fermenting on doorsteps.

At factories they farmed the sky,
reaping soot-laden harvests
stored in silos of black smoke,
smudging tongues and glasses.
They joked it was Old Man McCormick
rocking on the porch of his Reaper plant,
lighting a cheap cigar. And they laughed until
their lungs cried.

At foundries and packing houses
men and women wore their work home
in aprons, caps, collars, overalls, and long skirts;
flecks of cast iron and processed hides and hooves
snuck under their fingernails, silted through their hair,
seeping into blood-bleared eyes--
the perfume of this new Czech Eden.

from Philip C. Kolin, Pilsen Snow: Poems (Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2015).

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Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he has edited The Southern Quarterly. He has published more than 40 books, including seven collections of poems; his latest is Emmett Till in Different States: Poems available from Third World Press (Chicago).