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26 the minnesota review Craig Czury The old guy's been beat up pretty bad, bleeding from the scalp, split Up. And when he stops—middle of the sidewalk, surrounded by shoppers—leans forward to the side, blows a shot from his nose... blood too. He's been out all night walking or curled up somewhere—four days before Christmas. Sometimes I look at these old guys and see so much of how I feel that I have to stop, stand real close, and study by heart every gesture for survival. It's how I live among the dispossessed a little longer while the bottom eats away, a little closer to how home feels—since a kid— torn apart and bleeding. The job I had at a Behavioral Mod. School in the cafeteria monitoring appropriate/inappropriate bites and chews of the retarded, while surrounded by vomiting and epileptic seizures, makes me now wonder who, at the Catholic Worker, monitors the world's appropriate/inappropriate bites and chews? Who at the Sisters of the Road Cafe, Poverello House, Baloney Joe's, all the kitchens named for Saint Vincent de Paul.......... merry Christmas. ...