they sit around
trash-can fires at
night in the smelly alley,

In the ghetto...

drinking wine from
polished steer horns,
unkempt, pregnant from
trading sex for food, blankets,
and wine, in that order,

In the ghetto...

the grandmother is
not proud of conceiving
her daughter this way, her
daughter followed in her footsteps,

In the ghetto...

"we need to quit
sleeping with men for
our things," the woman
spoke like one who had
just discovered her mission
in life when she looked at her
precious granddaughter who had
no shoes, "I will not raise this baby in
an alley, I will not let her be taken in like
I was, then my daughter," then her mama cried,
the child's feet were so cold,

In the ghetto...

"Let the sewing
factory come!"  a woman
shouted "No! This is where
we live, we will cook our beans
in our kettles over trash-can fires
at this address,"

In the ghetto...

the untidy woman
wailed, the cops could
pull up at any minute, disband
the women, put out the trash-can
fires, confiscate their wine, and call
social services to come pick up their
children,

In the ghetto...

dirty, tattered
blankets stretched
across a makeshift
clothesline, babies and
children openly bathed in
in the gutters in the alley when
it rained, no compassion for the
homeless, street people, hippies,
flower children, wastrels, Viet Nam
vets to the gypsies who claim and defend
their spaces on the street, some die trying,

In the ghetto...

proprietor of the
bowling alley donates
chipped pins and warped
balls for alley bowling, at night,
they line up a row of trash-can fires
on each side of the alley and bowl pins
over with the help of Thunderbird,

In the ghetto...

tonight, the trash-can
fires extinguish early, no
game here anymore, they
leave the gutter, shut down
the alley,

In the ghetto...

early morning, the
tarpaulin shelters come
down, the only thing left
behind are the trash-can fire
scars, rings in the melted pavement
from the 50-gallon drums---drums they
are trading for tambourines and clay dreams,

then her mama
cried,

In the ghetto...


Authors note:  These are extracted lines from my next lesbian pulp fiction novel to be released BLUE CORN WOMAN; all I had to do to adapt In The Ghetto to poetry was call upon Elvis and find my rhythm and meter.  I thank famous cowboy poet Waddie Mitchell who I studied for years to learn a marketable style...


Copyright 2006 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist