Twenty-Four Robbers — Blackbird Archive

← v2n2, Fall 2003

Dispossessed is one way to put it. They broke in and took everything.

The story arrives like music from a Victrola smothered

With a fat silk pillow: muted. Somebody somewhere saw it.

Somebody else knew the driver. There were hacksaws and lockpicks,

Rumors of a pistol-whipping. Suddenly there was silver

On the pawnshop counter, bracelets and wedding rings.

Redistribution of wealth. Somebody drank a gimlet

At the corner bar and paid with a double sawbuck.

It was Robin Hood in a zoot suit. It was Ali Baba sliced in half.

They were having a party in the Avenues, Mardi Gras in June.

Cabs rolled in from the Boroughs. That's my steak knife.

Where'd you get that garter? Soup kitchens shut down early.

Posters of Marx appeared on the fence of the vacant lot:

To Each According To His Need. In the middle of a chorus

Somebody screaming: Open sesame. Open sesame . . .

music class politics

T.R. Hummer

T.R. Hummer is the author of fifteen books of poetry and essays, most recently In These States (Jacar Press, 2020) and Eon (Louisiana State University Press, 2018). His most recent poems have appeared in The New Yorker , New York Quarterly , and Rattle . A former professor, he served as editor-in-chief for the Kenyon Review , The New England Review , and The Georgia Review . He has received numerous awards and honors, including a National Endowment of the Arts Individual Artist Grant in poetry, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and the Donald Justice Award for Poetry. Formerly a professor and editor, he now lives in Cold Spring, New York. Photo by David Limburg