The Babushka
It’s not a person.
Like an immigrant boxer / mill hunky
Greased like a pig in the ring
Pursed pig lips ready for a cigar
Pierogi chest muscles to feed slums
No six pak abs but a quarter barrel keg
Blue eyes filled with hate and intolerance
And the fear maybe it’s not 100% fixed
And he may be exposed as a 100% fraud
No spin from “the boys” could substantiate a win.
It’s not a place.
Like a club for men and whites only
Filled with permeating thick cigar smoke
The pungent smell of sloppily spilt stale beer
Men in three piece suits and beaver pelt hats
Pocket watch chains dangling on fat stomachs
A place they’d never let in suckers that vote for them
Suckers on the teat of spoon-fedfed division; culture wars
Slapping each others backs where lying is the art of the deal
It’s a thing.
Brought to North America by immigrants most of us are
And like other American fashions adopted by our ethnicities
A symbol of the melting pot of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
With a utilitarian attitude expressing rugged commonality
My grandmothers and their friends wore them almost always
Except when they wore something more formal for Mass
In my mind I recall my young attractive mother with one
As others of her age at Steeler games on Sunday television
Waving them in the air on big 1970’s Pittsburgh Steeler plays
Written Saturday Morning September 9, 2023
By John Alan Conte, Jr.
Poet
