The Queen Anne never tries to 

hide, slyly aligning herself 

to the eyes of mindful passers-by: 

she is tall and bold, she is a 

‘modern woman,’ she is a relic 

of oil-barons and lumber-gods, 

Carnegie’s jeweled offspring. 

She is a capitalist, she is a corrupted 

mirror of the past, she does not cry when

her paint is stripped, only 

when her walls are empty. 

​

The American Foursquare is not 

particularly unique nor creative. 

It is the flagrant ‘childhood home,’ it is 

exactly as it sounds, four walls, 

gabled roof, stucco and plaster. 

The trim is white like the town 

around it, the backyard fenced, 

the children rowdy and the teenagers restless.

Oftentimes it pretends 

to be a visionary. 

​

The Chicago Bungalow 

is squat, homely, crouching low on crowded

streets, lowly, lowlife, brick and mortar. 

It knows no peace, only tangles and

thickets, fountains and foliage and 

legend says its popouts 

never get as warm as the rest of the house.

It dreams its shallow 

home-made dream, a kitchen 

filled with smoke, a red door slammed, 

a splintered-wood windowpane. 

​

The street signs point 

the wrong way and it is too easy 

to get lost here. Cars whistle past 

without thinking. No one pulls over, 

no one fixes the streetlamp when it 

starts to flicker. We are beautiful and 

desecrated—we can almost see the stars

from here, even light pollution 

forgets we exist.