have broken teeth: they have bruises and scars and great
running tracks: and all this they try to balance on four-inch,
six-inch, heels; toe-dancers in the dance of death. On this
corner mostly they are thin, too thin, hungered-away thin,
smacked-away thin: thin and yellow.
In the park down at the end of the block, not far away, the
drugs change hands. The police patrol the park: giving tickets
to those who take their dogs off the leash. In the daylight, four
boys steal money from an old man and run away, not too fast,
why bother. The dealers sit and watch. The police stroll by as
the deals are being made. Any dog off a leash is in for serious
trouble.
Ambulances drag by. Cars hopped up sounding like a great
wall falling flash by, sometimes crashing past a streetlight
and bending it forever. Buses trudge with their normal
human traffic. The cops coast by, sometimes with sirens,
sometimes flashing red, just to get past the stoplight. Fire
engines pass often, fast, serious, all siren and flashing light:
this is serious. Arson. Bad electrical wiring. Old tenements,
like flint. Building code violations. Whole buildings flame up.
We see the fires, the smoke, the red lights. First we hear the
sirens, see the flashing light with its crimson brilliance, then
we ask, is it here, is it us? We make jokes: that would warm
us up. Where are the cats? Can we get them out in time? We
have a plan, a cage we can pull down from a storage place
(we have no closets, only planks scattered above our heads,
hanging on to the edges of walls), and then we can rush
107
them all in and rush out and get away: to where? He sleeps.
How?
On TV news we see that in New York City where we live
people die from the cold each winter. We have called and
written every department of the city. We have withheld rent.
We have sued. No one cares. We know that we could die from
the cold. But fire— they must care about fire, they have a fire
department, we see the fire engines and the flashing red lights
and we hear the sirens. No cold department, no whore department, no vagabond department, no running-pus-and-sores department, no get-rid-of-the-drug-dealers department: but fire
and dogs-on-the-leash departments seem to abound. I am
always pleasantly surprised that they care about fire.
The disco music is so loud that we cannot hear our own
radio: we call the police. There is an environmental-something
department. They will drive by and measure the decibel level
of the sound. This is a great relief. Can someone come and
take the temperature in our apartment? The policeman hangs
up. A crank call, he must think, and what with so many real
problems, so much real violence, so many real people dying.
My pale blond friend sleeps, his skin bluish. I call the police
