SELECTIONS from GHETTO POEMS

Abstract

SELECTIONS from GHETTO POEMS by Russell Maraño THE GARDENS Beyond the edge of a muddy bank at the creek's bend the ghetto stretched up the mountain. Handsome rows of shimmering corn, lush tomatoes, and patches of fresh green lettuce, fringed the creek, then led up the hill to bootleggers' hideaways. Dotting the vegetable gardens were mysterious ponds, where frogs croaked and darting tadpoles turned their glistening bellies to the sun. Coal miners and bootleggers dipped water out of the ponds to feed eager mountain vegetables terracing past their neat and tidy homes to the chaos of ghetto streets. 37 Then gave vegetables to miners, whores, wineheads and bootleggers. Vegetables filling season's tables. And when the coal mines killed a miner, sometimes whores, not pension funds, fed his family, and thus the spiraling ghetto parceled out its morsels. FLORA Husband killed by company mines, evicted from company house, Flora shame-fled by night with her five children out of the company town and into the ghetto. On aching legs, she laundered and ironed clothes. In the winter, sharing one pair of shoes, brothers took turns carrying brothers to school. Then orphanages took the children, scattering the family. On aching legs, she laundered and ironed clothes. 38 A whorehouse madam said she dreamt an angel, glowing with light, crossed her porch. And the angel, glowing in the wood-worn steps of wandering wineheads, strays, shy hillbillies and reeling drunks, told the madam to sell her house to Flora for half price and without a down payment, so she could have a home for her family, and that "She, the madam, was good." And she sold her house to Flora. And a fresh, clean smell pushed out that "odor indefinable, peculiar to all whorehouses" aptly described by William Faulkner. And crosses and pictures of saints replaced mirrors on the walls. And the family did prosper. " THE BUTCHER SHOP" A coal mine nicknamed, by the people, because it maimed four to six men a day. Left the unlucky miners limping around the ghetto streets. A small mine, part of a large corporation, still paying dividends to stockholders around the world. And without dividends, I might not have written these poems. 39 THE DWARF JACOB The dwarf Jacob, under four feet tall weighing ninety-six pounds, automobile driver of extraordinary skill, his eyes, like a twin periscope, just over the brim of the dashboard, his car, breaking through three road blocks, rolling out of the east, through Cumberland Gap, down Mt. Storm and toward the ghetto. They caught him. Took his bootleg whiskey. And he was still cursing his loss of money and the fine he had to pay, after the next trip. BOYS' DREAMS Melting spring snows rushed out of the mountains, flooding the creek, carrying mounds of entangled debris at racing speed past my window to the West Fork Ohio, Mississippi, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. As a boy, I watched the river rise to the "Y" on the apple tree. White apple blossoms drifted to the muddy flood's edge, strayed 40 into the current to be carried to distant places. One child's night I dreamed of gliding out of the ghetto mountains on apple blossoms. II I was twelve when we built a rowboat. Captain Midnight (still in prison) supervised the construction. Celebrating the launching. we stole corn and tomatoes. And grapes from the arbor roofing the terraced steps of the gardens. Then "clipped" a case of pop from a Coca-Cola truck, then "hit" the stores for candy. We spread out at the door. They couldn't watch all of us. Captain Midnight got caught trying to stuff a head of lettuce under his tee shirt. We waited for him at the creek bank under the bridge. We were roasting corn when he sauntered silently, like darkness, to the fireside. We launched the boat. Our fire shadows danced across the creek bank to the sinking boat in the current. Boy' shadows riding dream currents. 41 ...