48 Poverty poems

Twelve dollars sixty cents, & the fact that there is no blood no storm can’t wash into dirt, that the time for these words is already ended, that for all the rain that has been here before so have I. & there is less water in the world than a famous woman once said, & I know that, & that the stars in the river also are real I also know, for they disappear also & refuse also to be touched. & I have touched bare things, & it works— it can be the sole unbraided moment in a life— but even so, what better days look like to me is still the tiny gore of heartbreak, & long walks with small shoes that can’t be taken off, & schools in a city I love that put molded cages over their clocks, because that works too to remind us we are not ready. & the worst of all is anything that stays as it is when touched. At lunchtime a woman famous for her ability to praise the ineffable says she can’t believe anyone returns to where they came from. But of course they do. In fact some do nothing else. & what is it they leave behind? Perhaps not the meaning of time, but the time of meaning, & the fact that whatever happens, tomorrow will change it.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations munching a plum on the street a paper bag of them in her hand They taste good to her They taste good to her. They taste good to her You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her hand Comforted Comforted When originally published in the journal Smoke(Autumn 1934), the line read: “Comforted, Relieved—” a solace of ripe plums seeming to fill the air They taste good to her

Sometimes, the naked taste of potato reminds me of being poor. The first bites are gratitude, the rest, contented boredom. The little kitchen still flickers like a candle-lit room in a folktale. Never again was my father so angry, my mother so still as she set the table, or I so much at home.

(The fantasia of a fallen gentleman on a cold, bitter night.) Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy, In the flash of gold heels on the hard pavement. Now see I That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy. Oh, God, make small The old star-eaten blanket of the sky, That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.

I. They let me go at night, minus my timepiece, lighter, personal effects. The air is always shaking the same jars of safety pins: cicadas. Song is my recidivism: always I'm abandoning the road to stand (unwatched, unseconded) in someone's field. The stars (that are not mine) tick fitfully, they always have appointments. Punctual, six-sharp, they are David's; they have lodged in his death tent, have stuck in his mud sleep. Bad luck leaves me a loan: no company, no katy- did or promissory note or night can last. The air loses its nerve, the old saw its eyeteeth and I my words—my alwaysing and my. II. In hush the repossessors reach the edges of the field. They pass for shadows, sheep of ambush, animals of permanence. They turn a black beyond returning and they haunt the sleepless. I don't count, who cannot earn my keep.

The meek inherit nothing. God in his tattered coat this morning, a quiet tongue in my ear, begging for alms, cold hands reaching up my skirt. Little lamb, paupered flock, bless my black tea with tears. I have shorn your golden fleece, worn vast spools of white lace, glittering jacquard, gilded fig leaves, jeweled dust on my skin. Cornsilk hair in my hems. I have milked the stout beast of what you call America; and wear your men across my chest like furs. Stickpin fox and snow blue chinchilla: they too came to nibble at my door, the soft pink tangles I trap them in. Dear watchers in the shadows, dear thick-thighed fiends. At ease, please. Tell the hounds who undress me with their eyes — I have nothing to hide. I will spread myself wide. Here, a flash of muscle. Here, some blood in the hunt. Now the center of the world: my incandescent cunt. All hail the dark blooms of amaryllis and the wild pink Damascus, my sweet Aphrodite unfolding in the kink. All hail hot jasmine in the night; thick syrup in your mouth, forked dagger on my tongue. Legions at my heel. Here at the world’s red mecca, kneel. Here Eden, here Bethlehem, here in the cradle of Thebes, a towering sphinx roams the garden, her wet dawn devouring.

You didn't know what was in the heap. A visitor found it to contain beggars. They sell the hollow of their hands. They show the sightseer their mouths full of filth, and let him (he can afford it) peer at the mange eating away at them. In their twisted vision his stranger's face is skewed; they are pleased with their accession, and when he speaks they spew.

To be poor and raise skinny children. To own nothing but skinny clothing. Skinny food falls in between cracks. Friends cannot visit your skinny home. They cannot fit through the door. Your skinny thoughts evaporate into the day or the night that you cannot see with your tiny eyes. God sticks you with the smallest pins and your blood, the red is diluted. Imagine a tiny hole, the other side of which is a fat world and how lost you would feel. Of course, I’m speaking to myself. How lost I would feel, and how dangerous.

Port-au-Prince Girl on a heap of street sweepings high as a pyre, laid on snarled wire & dented rim. Girl set down among the wrung-out hides. A girl who was coming from church. It is late Sunday afternoon.Was it a seizure? Is it destiny or bad luck we should fear? Weak heart or swerving taxi? In Tet Bef by the dirty ocean thousands crush past her without pausing at the shrine of her spayed limbs; brilliance like the flesh of lilies sprouting from the pummeled cane. Is it possible to be lighthearted, hours later? Days? To forget the yellow dress? I am waiting for her mother to find her, still wearing one white spotless glove (where is the other?), my idle taxi level with her unbruised arm, her fingers just curling like petals of a fallen flower and how did it end? Let someone have gathered her up before the stars assembled coldly overhead: her dress brighter than gold, crocus, the yolk of an egg her face covered like the bride of a god; let them have found her & borne her though the traffic's clamor veiled with a stranger's handkerchief.

How gray and hard the brown feet of the wretched of the earth. How confidently the crippled from birth push themselves through the streets, deep in their lives. How seamed with lines of fate the hands of women who sit at streetcorners offering seeds and flowers. How lively their conversation together. How much of death they know. I am tired of ‘the fine art of unhappiness.’