St Louis

The world has turned many times since I was last

at Fast Eddies on 4th Street in Alton,

Illinois, a Mississippi river town –

just after the First Gulf War to be exact.

Then Fast Eddies was a long, ill-lit room

with a bar and kitchen, wooden tables,

backless benches, and something of a

reputation. I had my pocket picked.

                               ***

Until the end of the Civil War

Missouri was a ‘slave’ state Illinois

a ‘free’ state. ‘Runaways’ would try to cross

the wide and headlong river to seek out

Alton’s few abolitionists, and then

be sent along the Underground Railway

north and east into safer states. The town,

however, was home to would-be slave owners,

settlers from Kentucky and Tennessee.

In the town’s cemetery – on top

of a chain of limestone bluffs that flank

the Mississippi at this point – is a

monument of big city proportions

placed so that it can be seen from across

the river. It is in memory of

Elijah P. Lovejoy, abolitionist

and champion of free speech, silenced

by a murderous pro-slavery mob.

                               ***

On the bluffs beside the Great River Road,

below the town, the first people painted

a giant bird, The Piasa – a creature

of myth, covered in multi-coloured scales,

with an eagle’s beak, and a fox’s head

surmounted by horns, that terrorised

the innocent in these fertile lands.

The people were exiled or slaughtered.

Archaeologists curate what they have left.

                               ***

The world has turned many, many times since.

Now at Fast Eddies there are neon lights,

live music, and cocktails, the furniture

is cabaret style, and customers dance

with iPhones on the website. But the beer

is still Budweiser from St Louis,

on the opposite bank of the river,

and the clientele is still entirely white.