Hard and Getting Harder

lucy-sol

This city is hard and getting harder.

A forever throng of millions from every scattered nation, lined up chest-to-back, a herd of malodorous cattle on an island twenty-two miles long, forced to scrabble for whatever crumbs fall down from our masters’ table.

Our masters sell the lie that we might one day join them.

They advertise diamond wristwatches on  bus stops to the slums pushed  further out each year as city rents climb and old neighborhoods are remade for the rich.

Hell’s Kitchen,  Bed-Stuy, even Harlem, all turned to luxury lofts and townhouses.

And still they keep coming, piling in, heads full of some store-bought hopeless hope.

 

 

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  1. Rowena

    Well done. You really conveyed a very chilling hopeless atmosphere. I found some of the syntax a little awkward but that could well suit the narrator and their conversational style.
    xx Rowena

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