I MAY HAVE
Have you seen the Chinatown banner yet, on that
old fence by the Weng-Dong Fortune? They have
placed photos of ducks and geese, with the words
'Dishonor your Nature Eat flesh!' Just that way.
An obvious translation? Myself, I like the incongruous
way the message flows : 'Dishonor! Your Nature (is to)
eat flesh!'; 'You dishonor your Nature when you eat flesh!'
It can go in any direction, and I like to play along.
-
Outside the store selling flesh - two hundred years of
Italian butchers before them, really, right here, before
it was even Chinatown - this has been going on.
Blood in the gutter and entrails flailing, Joey Gallo
was killed right over there, when it was Umberto's
Clam House for real. Now, like stockinged feet,
all those old Italians have gone quiet; no more
hanging sausages in the window, eggplants on
the shelf, and beef tallow on the counter. I
kind of like the way things disappear.
-
All my books say it wasn't always like this:
storm clouds came and went, fires and revolutions,
disasters with wagons and carts. Five hundred
people at a clip. Nowadays, I really don't
know if that was really it - a grand feeling
about something, maybe, once gone.
I may have had it, once.
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