Benjamin Goluboff

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Chicago Tattoos

The bartender at Violet Hour has a slice of photo-realistic bacon peeking out of his tee-shirt.

Goth chick eating ice cream at George’s has Urbs in Horto in a four-color sleeve.

Shirtless gay dude carrying Whole Foods down Southport has a Great Horned Owl spread open-winged, nipple to nipple, on his waxed or otherwise depilated chest.

You want to go petals-on-a-wet-black-bough with these people, turn the eye inward and, you know, strictly meditate the thankless Muse.

But the girl reading Adbusters at Quimby’s has the Man Ray portrait of Sinclair Lewis on her décolletage. And the woman in line at Sun Wah has a webwork pattern on her shoulder that turns out to be a schematic of the El.

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Benjamin Goluboff teaches at Lake Forest College. Aside from a modest list of scholarly publications, he has placed imaginative work — poetry, fiction, and essays — in journals including Hayden's Ferry Review, Milo Review, Misfit Magazine, Ilanot Review, Sleet, Cactus Heart, Cabinet and Ascent. He is at work on a series of poems based on the life of Ho Chi Minh; his poem "The Fairy Fleet at Fredericksburg" will appear in War Literature and the Arts later this year. Some of his work can be read at http://www.lakeforest.edu/academics/faculty/goluboff/​.