So can I Pat, even today. Smelled of musty wood. Repulsive. The building must've gone up during the Civil War. Not yours, ours:-). Probably hadn't been fumigated since.
On Oct 27, 2012, at 11:31 AM, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Kenneth thanks for that they came across -I can see the place -P
> Ps here's to Laura!!
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Kenneth Wolman
> Sent: 26 October 2012 17:52
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Memories of a collection agency
>
> It's an old poem. Still strikes me. If it's relevant, that's scary.
>
> ALLEGHENY REALTY CORP.
>
> A collection man had shown me a door,
> right by a dingy fileroom on the 3rd floor
> Allegheny Realty Corp. it said, in black stencil.
> Behind the door was a broom closet.
> It was some slumlord's rent-check mail-drop:
> a place he could go without fear of getting shot
> by some tenant-in-arrears.
>
> Downstairs, on Two, we worked the tenants who owed our client:
> a Su Credito Es Bueno Aqui jewelry store on the street floor
> that gave Easy Terms, sold the Norteamericano White Man's Dream
> to cleaning girls from Bayamon, Black countermen,
> day-laborers without Union books:
> the Olympic TV, sapphire ring, Gruen watch, or set of silverplate.
> We ogled Laura, the hourglass body Puerto Riquena bookkeeper,
> said she was worth a sterling silver diaphragm,
> and that we'd fight to install it ourselves.
>
> Divorced guys and a high-school kid: me.
> I knew where I had come from: an upstairs neighbor
> fixed an off-the-books summer job for a kid
> with a future in English Lit'ra'cha.
> But I never dreamed what fate had brought these
> wrinkled collars and dollar ties to this place.
> I wondered only why these middle-aged men looked at me with envy
> or anger, snarled "Kid, why the fuck are you here?"
> as they hung up from a minimum wage debtor
> who'd told them to burn in hell for the hundredth time that week.
>
> They always fell behind, our clients,
> so we garnished them because that's what the job was:
> called the Brooklyn Civil Court and kept a magistrate hopping:
> The buff cards of broken dreams were piled floor to ceiling,
> scattered on desktops, wedged under phone books.
> We worked the horn to work out terms: but got false addresses,
> disconnected phones, crazed accented voices telling us to
> make much too good friends with our mothers,
> or to put our fates in the hands of the gods
> as those we garnished had put theirs.
>
> At noon I'd cross the street, sit in the old Pennsylvania Station,
> marked by '61 for the wrecker's ball,
> look up at my glass ceiling,
> and thank God that my ticket was punched,
> that I would go to college in the fall,
> forget this place, forget the vengeful phone calls,
> forget the cursing manager who struck out last night
> and took it out on a widow,
> forget my sticky virgin night-fantasies of Laura the bookkeeper,
> and inhabit a world of high art, of poetry
> that would soar into an Avalon of misty hills and kings.
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