Poverty--A Triptych--
(panel 1)
Poverty is grass attacked at the flank,
thrummed to the root, choked to
so low a barrenness only snow
will know enough to mourn
what was once the whole
of Persia and now, after
two weeks, is thin, the tongue of a young
mother who alone and on her own smokes
a slow jerky of her lung, into the lung
of her new son who blinks in the blur
of blue gray two packs a day and later
with his other brothers, occasional sister
will make his way out to the mud next
spring, barefoot and breath-heavy, and not
know, ever, why his milk is blue or why dogs
move slower in August unless they’re off
the chain and then bolt fast away to piss
on the green tuft thrust up by and through
the throat of the mailbox pole-hole, the only
color that ever forgives here, that waits
at the edge of things, like foxes, like hunger
at best the only adult in the house and too
the only baby, born old every day, tottering
to the cupboard, to the window over the sink
needing a wash, to look out at the kids smear
themselves, and eat, occasionally, their pretend
pies, look at the sky, look at the drive, look at
all of it as far as their ends can take them,
the frayed fade of Mama’s red bandana,
her now brown, once white, fraying lace bra.
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