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A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Harrison Street Court

Carl Sandburg

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.”
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Chicago Poems | Henry Holt & Company, 1916
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