The Juvenile Street Cleaning League
Nicole Cooley | Poetry
was invented, once upon a time, in New York, at the end of the nineteenth century.
Network of immigrant children, on the Lower East Side, in white caps.
Who walked the streets, reported on those who littered.
Who kicked bottles and apple peels to the gutter to keep sidewalks clean.
Who were the eyes, ears, and noses of the street cleaning department.
As they sought out wrongdoing, the boys and girls were told to sing:
The streets untidy litter with the dirt has passed away.
We children pick up papers, even while we are at play.
Once upon a time, we asked children to fix the world.
Colonel Waring said, Then, too, we are giving an entirely new and very useful
training to those who are soon to become the men and women of the city.
I wish I could hold all these children on my lap.
Come forward, my little tattletales, gather round, my spies, what were you thinking?
Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans and is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Mother Water Ash (Louisiana State University Press 2024), as well as two chapbooks and a novel. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York.