Farewell, Thornall Towers!

A Plague on Edison

______

The Sandwich Man of Thornall Towers

The sandwich man’s a gangsta bon vivant,
all wiry with his crumpled paper hat.
He faces down a proletariat
of pasty-faced insurance men who want
the soggy tuna fish on rye. A layer
fat with mayonnaise is on the bread
like that. He hops and hollers—but instead
of calling “Next!” he fronts with “Step up, player!”

Their eyebrows tell it all. He’s tempting fate
as Lotto ladies start to bag their own,
preferring straight and boxed and neatly-ranked
attendants at the sandwich bar. “Go home,”
he’s told on Monday when he rolls in late.

A flower blooms at Thornall—
it gets yanked.

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