New York Is Dead, or The War Will Continue Indefinitely

by Harry Siegel

This poem is part of a rat zine, Street Leather, which you’ll find soon in the gutters and dark alleys of New York City or wherever zines are sold

New York is dead like yesterday’s head-

lines, today’s fish-wrap. Dead like Battle-Axe 

Bill, the “oversized Irish terrier with a proper 

fighting spirit and a hatred

for the island’s invaders” who

was dispatched to Rikers’ 400

acres made mostly of the city’s trash 

barged in, heaped up and then set 

ablaze, the island shining like “a forest 

of Christmas trees” at night, a “whole hillside…

lit up with little fires.” The dog “kept the rats in

their place” until it did not and they “cornered, killed 

and devoured” the beast. RIKERS ISLAND 

RATS TRAP AND KILL A DOG blared

the New York Times, adding, obviously,

PEST IS NOW A PROBLEM. Stop 

the presses!