The Shoe Shine Parlor Poems et al
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About this ebook
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.
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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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