Mall Rats and Their Grandmothers
Elli Hazit
The beggar held out his hand
And I looked the other way
* * *
She
cannot read or write
Settles back
under her cloak of
fundamentalisms
The Philosopher
said there is no coherent self
but there is beauty
and a perversion
His own Sister
made up lies rewrote him
I imagine her with long hair
bangs cut straight across her forehead
After six thousand years
the tools get lost
Art tinkered to death
And no one loves
the Long-legged Boys
who talk too loud
Bred from moments of booze-soaked joie de vivre
boredom, or just vague curiosity
They loom
Hunters without lances
in an overheated dugout
circus tent
of choices elaborately displayed
She
makes meals to set before the
Men
leaving herself safely in their hands and
She
wears no shoes
except to go out in the daytime
covered to her ankles
The image of the law
____________________
Elli Hazit was born in San Francisco in 1960. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her master’s degree from Boston University. Hazit lived in Paris, France from 1983 to 1997. Her writing has been published in the International Herald Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Cambridge News. She has also produced radio programs for WORT-FM, Madison. One of her stories, “The Tangerines and the Dogs,” was broadcast internationally on the BBC World Service Programme.
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