Chicago Poems/Harrison Street Court

by Carl Sandburg

 

HARRISON STREET COURT

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.”