The Masses

roya ann miller photo

By

Jerry Vilhotti

Gianni could still feel his father’s love for him surging through the song “Donkey Serenade” he had played on his accordion at least a hundred times since he came among them in a crash landing out the body of a thirty-nine year old mother and as a three year old he would gallop all over the apartment every time when all their relatives and friends would gather to try and forget, for at least one night of the week, the Great Depression that was making a third of the country become what the super elite – who had not jumped out windows to be caught by concrete twenty flights below – laughingly called “the dying of hunger people” – that included some of their own lesser puppets who would have to be taken care of by their sons and daughters until social security and Medicare kicked in which the super elite called a dirty social-istic idea that one day would take away from the masses their guns, Bibles and all their own profits gained on the backs of the unwashed masses – and Gianni would only stop his galloping when his father changed tunes bringing forth “The Tarantella” as people danced with fervor and the ones with the most glorious movements were encircled by the others as Johnny joined the clapping making the pain in his hands match the pride in his heart.

Jerry Vilhotti

Jerry Vilhotti has had two collections of works accepted by a publisher: “Gods Depicting Pastime” which has the Greek gods discovering a game once played by people – who plastered their bodies with empire blue to be one with the sky and tried to figure out what the tic infested thing was about and the second collection called “Specs in the Eyes of Seeing” that follows a little boy’s journey from childhood to manhood.