John Greiner
Little Match Girl
Revolt America against the Little Match Girl! She’s a Dane, anyhow. She’s not one for the indomitable spirit of the New World. You big time rollers of the west, little blondes only look good when they’re well fed.
I’ll give her gum wrappers and nothing more.
I’ll live with her in an attic on Hudson Street.
I’ll set sail across the East River with her and find solace in the Seamen’s Church. We’ll wash ashore in the storm and walk to Willow Street.
I will not suffer beneath her sorrow, however.
Ring my buzzer. Smash my kaleidoscope. Cut down to the ground all the clowns and neophytes. Listen to me Izzy! I’ve had more to say than the whole of your Harvard class.
Akron is unacceptable to the likes of me, but I’ll always hold a place in my heart for Canton. Jim Thorpe is a memory I’ll not soon forget. I never knew him and now he is no longer known, but that poor persecuted half Injun means something to me. He’s the body and the life and the sole hostage of the big bewilderment. The suffering red man who you’d think was Russian, he being one so misunderstood.
All those backdoors that we can’t open. All the volcanic gods drinking Gatorade to cool their cruel thirsts. All the trance dancing ditzes not Danes who sway and go away never knowing it was the swish that captured the mind more than any of their Sufi mysticism ever could. When we end up it the vegetable garden it’s all good.
