Bite the Hand

Written & Narrated by Charles Rammelkamp

Maryland

Bite the Hand

I’ve been Jack Schneider so long

I might as well be Jack Schneider

instead of Tommy Wilhelm,

like I was born.

 

Besides, who’s to say I’m not?

The dentures I eat with

may not have come from my gums

like babies being born,

but they still tear meat,

still chew food.

 

Since I took that kid’s life

from the Chicago death records,

made his ancestry my own,

got a Social Security number,

I’ve lived Jack Schneider’s life,

saved for his retirement.

 

Retirement!  Maybe if this cancer

weren’t eating away at my guts,

sure to cut my life short

in another few months,

I’d be cashing Jack

Schneider’s monthly check in a few years

down in Florida,

after thirty-five years spent in Gary, Indiana.

 

Jack Schneider wasn’t the one

ran away from marriage

to a girl he knocked up

after a drunk Saturday night in Omaha.

Jack Schneider fed me forty years.

But is Jack Schneider the one

with the rope around his neck,

about to kick away the stool

he’s standing on?