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There I Am Again Lawrence Joseph I see it again, at dusk, half darkness in its brown light, large tenements with pillars on Hendrie beside it, the gas station and garage on John R beside it, sounds of acappella from a window somewhere, pure, nearby it pouring through the smell of fried pork to welcome whoever enters it to do business. Today, again, in the second year of the fifth recession my father holds pickled feets, stomachs and hearts, I lift crates of okra and cabbages, let down crates of buttermilk and beer, bring live carp to the scale and come, at last, to respect the intelligence of roaches in barrels of bottles, I sell the blood on the wooden floor after the robbery, salt pork and mustard greens and Silver Satin wine, but only if you pay, down, on the counter money you swear you'll never hand over, only if, for collateral, you don't forget you too may have to kill. Today, again, in the third year of unlimited prosperity, the Sunday night the city burns I hear sirens, I hear broken glass, I believe Reprinted from Curriculum Vitae, by Lawrence Joseph (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988), 56-57. 179 Work the shadow of my father's hand that touches my hair, my cousin loading a carbine, my uncle losing his mind today in a place the length of a pig's snout in a time the depth of a cow's brain in Joseph's Market on the corner of John R and Hendrie there I am again: always, everywhere apron on, alone behind the cash register, the grocer's son angry, ashamed, and proud as the poor with whom he deals. 180 ...

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