Our tiny peninsula, hanging from

what they would come to call Queens was sold then

Twenty-five dollars, the deed agreed sum

Dollar more than they got for Manhattan

But honest history could never say

we’d been bilked, even here at Shinnecocke

Those who dared live between Ocean and Bay

Tilled soil salty from hurricane shock,

pirates, booze smugglers, politicos — guess

where all the city’s disenfranchised went?

In the Far Rockaway of the Heart-less

Mess. There Bernie Madoff met Ruth and spent

her babysitting pay at Connolly’s

Shall I compare thee to a sandy breeze?

-jill eisenstadt, from “Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms with Queens.”