The Shoe Shine Parlor Poems et al

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.