When I Walk to the Mailbox

I pass this little house which has this little fake wishing well in its front yard, out near the sidewalk. I pass it on my way back from the mailbox, not to the mailbox. Like a stray dog trotting down the street, I prefer variety, so I go down one side of the street and up the other. Nosy fucker? Not really. The little house's little fake wishing well has a little fake bucket and a fake handle. At least it's not a "Yard Mary." Steelton was once very Catholic. It's a Mary cult one block over from my neighborhood. All these little shrines that look like half sunken bathtubs framing Mary, who uses a lot of cosmetics apparently. The Italian immigrants were plentiful here--as were all the others. It's as though Ellis Island flew through space and landed here. Voila Steelton, circa 1900. Lots of Eastern Europeans too. Hot Slavs. You still see them everywhere here. The cemetery down the street glows with candles and strange rituals. But now of course the young ones are rappers or skatepunks on YouTube. Or have a lucrative drug business. I mean since there are no jobs. Can you blame them? A nineteen year old well-heeled Slav drug dealer with perfect cheekbones and hyaline eyes could do wonders for your self esteem. Try one. I'm sure there are still great-grandmothers in attics and nursing homes around here who can still sing those songs they sang in the fields over there. Lisa Gerard would take notes, no doubt. Those cheekbones! Bohunks tossed into the Mills came out the other side respectable middle classers. You know--the boring, inspiring American struggle thing. Go write a Sidney Sheldon novel. Spare me. Anyway, the people took a plaster statue of Michelango's David (painted black and about three feet tall) and just threw him in there for some reason. Now it's filled with snow and the top parts of David stick up above the snow. And he looks pissed. Really pissed or constipated. He's at this odd leaning angle. I gues his base broke or something, and they didn't want to just throw him away, so they just propped him up in a wishing well. Like I guess they wanted to get their full value out of their Michelangelo's David from HOME DEPOT. I mean, you wouldn't throw away a Michelangelo, would you? Even if it was broken? I wonder why somebody thought he looked better in black? It would be funny if a rich black person put white yard jockeys in their yard that were variations on famous sculptures like Michelangelo's David or some Canovas, etc....George Washington as a yard jockey, David as yard jockey...holding that little racist lamp.