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Thrills of a Bell Boy

Chapter 10: IX.
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About This Book

The collection presents a series of comic, first-person monologues by a hotel bellboy who idolizes actresses and imagines alternate lives as a wealthy lover or stage star. Through colloquial, humorous verses he recounts bouquet-throwing mishaps, backstage glimpses, romantic fantasies, and the deflating discovery of performers’ ordinary realities, while reflecting on appearances, social aspiration, and gossip. Light irony and working-class vernacular punctuate moments of yearning and self-deprecating wit, shifting between dreamy ambition and pragmatic resignation across short, episodic poems.

IX.

ONCE, when her instrument was workin’ bad
She jerked the thing and hit it with her fist
And nearly broke her round, soft little wrist—
I never s’posed that she could get so mad.
When I told ma it seemed to make her glad.
She says a girl that looks as nice as pie
Sometimes has awful thoughts: I wonder why
Ma’s always knockin’ so? It makes me sad.