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Harrison Street Court

by Carl Sandburg, 1916

I heard a woman’s lips
 Speaking to a companion
 Say these words:

 “A woman what hustles
 Never keeps nothin’
 For all her hustlin’.
 Somebody always gets
 What she goes on the street for.
 If it ain’t a pimp
 It’s a bull what gets it.
 I been hustlin’ now
 Till I ain’t much good any more.
 I got nothin’ to show for it.
 Some man got it all,
 Every night’s hustlin’ I ever did.”

Published in Chicago Poems
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