“Let me tell you something. There’s no nobility in poverty.”

 
                                         -Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street
   
 
 
Rarely do we ask to hear the overdog story.
 
We revel in the details of a hard-fought, hard-won battle
An honest climb from humble beginnings to stratospheric heights
 
 
We ask for your tired, poor, huddled masses
as we suffocate in this polluted air,
yearning to b(r)e[athe] free
in bodies breaking under the weight of an old colossus
 
we celebrate victories along a sliding scale of impossibilities,
seek stories of suffering 
relish retellings of feats of echoing endurance
 
 
on occasion, we call to mind quiet champions,
but we prefer to savor the spit of our own watering mouths aching to taste tales of violent overthrowing
 
 
I pass a man sitting on the sidewalk along Sixth Avenue
he held a sign that read “underdawg”
 
most walk past him
several pass through him like an apparition they can’t bother to fear
 
I reached into my pocket
found some loose change
dropped it in his hat, mouthed a quick “me, too”
& walked on without breaking stride
 
Ten blocks later I asked myself
Who among us become the overdogs?
 
I look south towards Wall Street
and remember those forbidden fables not meant for our tick-ridden ears
 
so, we howl at the moon
bark, bite 
run wild in packs
lie in wait under skyscraped shadows 
 
we keep the overdogs wondering
if we’ll ever stop chasing our tails long enough
to hunt them down
tear them to shreads
and feast on our fortune reclaimed