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The Shoe Shine Parlor Poems et al
The Shoe Shine Parlor Poems et al
The Shoe Shine Parlor Poems et al
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The Shoe Shine Parlor Poems et al

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These narrative and lyric poems derive from the author's youth in the South Bronx and his work as a bootblack in the family shoe shine parlor during the 1960s.

The first section, “the shoe shine parlor poems,” contains narratives and character sketches of neighborhood personalities: the man who pretended to be a policeman, the golden glove boxer beaten senseless by the police in a case of mistaken identity, the one-eyed heroin addict, the local bully receiving his ironic comeuppance, the seventh son whose luck ran out in the Vietnam War.

The second section, “et al,” is a more lyrical view of the Bronx: a tribute to a goldfish imprisoned in the heel of a woman's platform shoe, Thoreau thrown off a rooftop, a young girl killed while playing in the spray of a fire hydrant, the old accordion player's swan song, a celebration of the weeds which even the Bronx cannot kill.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 15, 2014
ISBN9781310103322
The Shoe Shine Parlor Poems et al
Author

W.R. Rodriguez

W.R. Rodriguez grew up in the Bronx where he worked as a bootblack in the family shoe shine parlor. He moved to Madison where he earned an M.A. in English and taught high school for over thirty years. The urban environment has been a major source of his writing: “Although I left The Bronx decades ago, it has not left me. To give ironic tribute to the Romantics, I regard the streets and tenements as worthy subjects of art. I enjoy creating poetry from my memories of people, places, and events, as well as from research and imagination. Also, I want my poems to work on the page and to have a strong voice if read aloud.”His poetry has appeared in magazines such as Abraxas and Epoch, and in anthologies such as The Party Train, Welcome to Your Life, and Editor’s Choice III. Articles about his family’s experience in The Bronx were published in The Bronx County Historical Society Journal.W.R. Rodriguez is the author of several books of poetry. His latest, from the banks of brook avenue, is an evolution of the work he began in the shoe shine parlor poems et al and developed in concrete pastures of the beautiful bronx.

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    Book preview

    The Shoe Shine Parlor Poems et al - W.R. Rodriguez

    the shoe shine parlor poems et al

    w. r. rodriguez

    © 1984 by W. R. Rodriguez

    Grateful appreciation to the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation for supporting the completion of this work.

    And thanks to Sterngar

    for sharing the spirit.

    Some of these poems have previously appeared in Abraxas, Collage of 9 & 1, The Croton Review, and Epoch.

    A print edition of this book was published in 1984 by Ghost Pony Press. It is available at: www.ghostponypress.com.

    This epub was prepared in 2014 by Mike P. for zeugpress.

    For other works by the author go to: www.wrrodriguez.com.

    Smashwords Edition

    dedicated to my parents and to my wife

    CONTENTS

    the shoe shine parlor poems

    making it

    the cop

    the shoe shine poem

    al’s pictures of old times

    grandfather

    coffee

    blinky

    the banana man

    little spic & big man

    the bust

    jim

    the long walk to bed

    private rivers

    et al

    the moon does not linger

    Something Fishy

    the miracle

    the old woman

    late one hot august

    the day i threw thoreau off the roof

    they disappear

    of bootblacks

    what i remember most about hughes avenue

    the accordion player

    butch

    weeds

    the bronx at the end of the mind

    I

    shoe shine parlor poems

    making it

    great grandfather burned some government office

    in some spanish town made it to puerto rico

    hiding in jungles huts from wanted posters

    & police must’ve hid pretty well because

    somehow grandfather made it to new york

    rolling cigars surviving the depression & me

    putting dirt in his pipe sitting always

    by the television watching yankee games

    never cheering smiling sometimes

    dying in a railway flat

    on cypress avenue where he lived twenty years

    in the south bronx

    where my mother also lived forty years

    met my father married sent him to wall street

    each day dressed in

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