of a muddy bank
at the creek's bend
the ghetto stretched up the
mountain.
Handsome
rows
of shimmering corn,
lush tomatoes,
and patches of fresh
green lettuce,
fringed the creek,
then
led up the hill
to bootleggers' hidewaways
Dotting
the vegetable gardens
were mysterious ponds,
where frogs croaked
and
darting tadpoles turned their
glistening bellies to the sun
Coal miners and bootleggers
dipped water out of the ponds
to feed
eager mountain vegetables
terracing
past
their
neat and tidy homes to the chaos of ghetto streets.
Then gave
vegetables
to
miners, whores, wineheads and bootleggers.
Vegetables
filling
season's tables
And when the coal mines
killed a miner,
sometimes whores
not pension funds,
fed
his family,
and thus the spiraling ghetto
parceled out its morsels.
This poem contains copyrighted material. The WVU Libraries is making this poem available in our efforts to advance the complexity and understanding of the history of Appalachian foods. This constitutes a “fair use” of the material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. Russell Marano (1931-1982) was a third generation Italian and son of a coal miner in Clarksburg /Harrison County. The poet wrote about the realities of growing up poor but proud in Glen Elk, the Italian section of Clarksburg. (Stewart, Al. “Farewell, Far Traveler, Fine Friend.” Appalachian Heritage, Volume 11, Number 2, Spring 1983, pp. 61-63.