Uh, South Bronx, is that name familiar to you at all?
[CLAPPING]
We have a few Easterners here, I guess.
It's a place that can turn your stomach, that's all I can say.
[LAUGHTER]
Where am I in all this?
Under a heap of rubble.
Somewhere in the middle of waiting the nose of the rat
to sniff me out.
And to think a moment of my human smell.
The rat will find it hard to understand back off,
bare its teeth, turn tail and run.
But I am nothing at all.
I am refuse.
I am a junk body.
I cannot be repaired.
I have damaged irreplaceable parts.
Eyes, that refuse to see any longer,
turned in on themselves.
Arms, that stick to my sides, unable and unwilling
to move out of a lack of anything for them to do.
Legs, stiff and straight out before me,
never having had anywhere to go, never
put to use to walk the world.
My stomach is shrunken and beyond food
because what I was served as food, never really fed me.
But I could be useful.
I am garbage, like any batted open can or empty milk carton.
I want, at least, to be found useful by the rat.
To regain pride in myself before I molder into insensibility.
If he hates and fears me, then, it's
because it was my species that hunted him, at one time,
and forced him to eat garbage in secret humiliation.
He is confusing me with my own kind.
If only he would understand, and I
could help by becoming unrecognizable,
a pulp of flesh.
[CLAPPING]