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garbage trucks are now parked
where my grandparents once lived
by Michael Estabrook
New York City in the Great Depression,
such a dirty place, such a vile time.
My grandparents and great aunts
and aunts and uncles and great uncles
all scratching around
like rats in a trash mound
for mere survival, spending
the little money they'd scraped-up
on alcohol and cigarettes.
And they slept around, too, of course,
with no apparent trepidation,
dragging their weary asses home
in the early morning hours sodden drunk,
irascible, demanding, inconsolable,
pugnacious, nasty, biting,
truly like rats cornered in a dirty cage.
They were born and raised, lived
and worked and bred and died,
in the poorest sections of Staten Island,
where now the garbage trucks are parked.
And all I can figure from this fetid stew
of immoral ignominiousness
is that these people, my forebears,
were so miserable in their ignorance
and poverty, in the barrenness of their
existence, that if it weren't for
being drunk and promiscuous,
they would have killed themselves in despair,
which actually a few of them did.
Originally published in Re)verb Issue 3
©2004 Michael Estabrook
All Rights Reserved
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