Wanted: A Black Tote Bag

roaming through my email i came across a photograph of a woman carrying an open black tote bag with the words — first bronx literary festival — so i  immediately set to finding a similar tote bag which was not possible because it was part of a kickstarter campaign to raise money and establish the literary festival and if you again flash forward the festival became a reality which hardly seemed possible to many who recalled the burning of the south bronx where guns once were more common then books

i did find tote bags with slogans ranging from bronx native to born in the bronx to bronx cheerleader but haven’t yet found a black tote bag with the precise slogan i want because either the color was wrong or the slogan didn’t quite fit although i’m leaning toward born in the bronx

it wasn’t the south bronx but it was the bronx enclave of four or five story apartment buildings fronting streets where rabid games of stickball were played and small shuls were within walking distance and people knew their parish and the church connected to their address

it was the bronx where men played handball and women played mai jong and children used chalk to lay out games on city streets

so why not buy a tote bag?