Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HUDSON RIVER ANTHOLOGY, by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HUDSON RIVER ANTHOLOGY, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: I ran a store
Last Line: He's serving thirty years.
Alternate Author Name(s): F. P. A.
Subject(s): Business; Labor & Laborers; Money; Retail Trade; Wages; Businessmen; Businesswomen; Work; Workers; Stores; Shops; Shopkeepers; Salaries


I RAN a store;
I underpaid my help
And lied about the goods I sold;
Lied in advertisements in the newspapers.
Then the war came.
It hurt my business,
And so the things the papers said
Hurt my investments.
True things they were, those journalistic utterances,
And bravely said.
But I wrote solemn letters to the papers,
Signing various names;
"All I want is Fair Play," they said.
O. Henry could have made a yarn of that, I think.

JANITOR CARL CARLSEN

I WAS a petty grafter
But given so to whining
The tenants in the apartment house
All pitied me a lot.
An inefficient janitor
Entitled "superintendent";
I was a shadow boxer,
And the landlord thought I worked.
Commissions from the butcher,
Commissions from the newsman,
Commissions from the grocer,
Amounted up, in a year.
One day, in greed for grafting,
I tried to make the milkman
Give me a larger percentage—
He tried to shoot me dead.
The bullet grazed my shoulder—
The milkman was convicted.
He's serving thirty years.





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