Adrian Matejka’s “Blues His Sweetie Gives to Me”

I was out-of-doors, eating snowballs

for dinner & sleeping by Lake Michigan.

Nights so cold even the Chicago police



weren't up for rousting me. The soles

of my shoes so thin I could step on a dime

& tell whether it was heads or tails. If I



had a dime. Sparring with Frank Childs

was my first bit of Chicago luck. They

called Frank "The Crafty Texan,"



but I have yet to meet a colored Texan

who isn't crafty. In the ring, Frank followed

me like I was the one who ran off with



his wife. He'd grab my shoulder with his left,

then hook my ribs with his right until his corner-

man pulled him off. I was smaller then



& couldn't defense like I can now, & Frank

was a big man—grappling gloves & red eyes.

But when somebody told him I needed



a place to stay, he let me sleep on the floor.

I had to leave when his no-good wife decided

to come back. In the middle of the night,



the snow coming down so furiously even

the bricks in the buildings wanted shelter.

I spent that night seething underneath a statue



of General John A. Logan. It was so cold,

it seemed as if the bronze horse the general

sat on turned his head away from the wind.