Part of
the Deal
by
Ralph Murre
was
that you owed a good death.
Whether
you were a good guy
or
not, you had to die right.
If
I came out from behind
something
and pointed my finger
and
said bang! before you did
and
cried gotcha, you might
say
no y’didn’t or gotcha
first
y’dirty Nazi,
but
in the end, we all had to die
with
awful groaning and kicking
and
many spasms and rolling
back
of eyeballs and ultimately,
as
anybody who’s ever seen
a
dead guy knows, the tongue
must
protrude, skewed
from
a corner of the bluish lips.
And
then, you had to stay
really
still and painfully contorted
‘til
you got bored and came back
to
fight again or play red rover.
But
it was not part of the deal
in
the bang-you’re-dead wars
of
South Sixth Street
that
you got your balls shot off
or
came back to play
wheelchair
red rover.
Nobody
on our street said
bang-you’re-screwed-up-for-life
the
way it happened when some
of
us fought on other streets.
No
amputees on Sixth.
No
psych ward on Ohio Avenue
~
first published in The Cliffs “Soundings”
