by Issa M. Lewis
Based on the 1932 photo attributed to Charles C. Ebbets
Eleven pairs of feet trailing in the breeze, a feast
of eleven lunches made by wives or mothers
waiting solidly on the ground. Eleven bellies
filling, eleven faces warming in the sun
after hours of guiding steel girders into place
in a place previously reserved for pigeons.
Eleven sets of calloused hands soften their grip
around a sandwich or a pasty or a yeast roll
while eleven minds contemplate the rooftops
of all the other buildings, how small and bald
they seem from up here.
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