Ghetto Poetry

The Ghetto by Lola Ridge

[read first three parts @ 
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/ghetto.html



Part I.

Cool, inaccessible air
Is floating in velvety blackness shot with steel-blue lights,
But no breath stirs the heat
Leaning its ponderous bulk upon the Ghetto
And most on Hester street...

The heat...
Nosing in the body's overflow,
Like a beast pressing its great steaming belly close,
Covering all avenues of air...

The heat in Hester street,
Heaped like a dray
With the garbage of the world.

Bodies dangle from the fire escapes
Or sprawl over the stoops...
Upturned faces glimmer pallidly -
Herring-yellow faces, spotted as with a mold,
And moist faces of girls
Like dank white lilies,
And infants' faces with open parched mouths that suck at the air
as at empty teats.