“Here Lies”

By LEE TEPPER

All differences are forgotten six feet deep in the ground.
Panagopoulos lies peacefully with Casarino and Cohen, O’Hara and Quiang Yu, never again to let their conflicts trouble the streets of Brooklyn.
The battling undertakers are themselves undertaken, and Tony Studo lies in his watery grave.
Perpetually eight years old.
Paving stone forever clutched in his hands.

Stuart and O’Connor assumed angels would weep for them when they died.
Did they weep for Tony? Maybe not, but someone did, and someone will if I can help it.
Little Italian boy he met his end too soon in the muck and waste of the canal.
Little Italian boy, they fished out your body and your mother cried and two men, blind with wood alcohol and hate drew their weapons on Saint John’s Place.

Kids like me and Tony, we get around.
Set aside a plot for us, simple stones will do.
No mausoleum or great stone obelisk, just something small to mark the place.
Set us on a hill so we can look out across Fourth Avenue, out to the water, and me and Tony will visit the statue of liberty every day of a peaceful death.