The WIC Appointment

The WIC Appointment

I am too tired to help you help me.

I am too tired to remember the words that worked

for the last one of you.

I am too tired to keep up my end of the pretense

that this is a meeting between equals,

or a client being served.

I am a poor woman being bribed with a bag of food

to let the government inspect her child and her life,

and I am too tired to make a good impression.

I am too tired to keep up with your questions 

and my child's questions

all hitting me at the same time

as my child climbs the foot-high child chair in your office

and you look at me in horror for my failure to intervene

because I am too tired to remember 

there is a middle-class virtue of not climbing furniture, 

not anything, not anyone, not anywhere, not ever.

I am too tired to make like a helicopter for your approval.

I am too tired to explain that with two disabled parents

and a playground once a month or less

what a blessing it is this child has learned to use

Chairs, stairs, walls, falls, tumbles, bumbles, and leaps

to embrace a sense of physical self and physical wealth

that is ever so much more important

than flashcards at this or any other age

as I know all too well from having a body that has been

too weak too slow too sick and for so long 

too tired to feel like home.

I am too tired to teach you, too tired to reach you

across the expanse of three feet, one desk, 

and more differences than you can imagine.

Just don't put me through another amateur psych eval.

Don't call CPS because my child climbed a chair.

Don't turn on me because I was too tired
to help you escape
feeling like what you are

an agent of the government

using food as a bribe

to inspect poor parents,

our children,

our lives.

At the Library

At the Library
------

Legos speak English.
Legos speak Spanish.
Legos speak Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi.
Shhhh, grown-ups--
Children are listening
To legos, at the library
Teach how to be American.

Afflicting My Own Comfort

"Let them unfriend you," she said.
I did not want to hear it.

"You have to understand," she said,
"That choosing to silence yourself
To the people who won't listen to us,
Is choosing to waste the privilege that we don't have."

"Deciding you can't afford the energy
To keep arguing on our behalf,
is an act of entitlement."

"Walking away
And leaving the walls of their echo chamber
To grow thicker and stronger
Is the opposite of teaching them something."

I did not want to hear it.
I listened anyway.

We have been telling you 
this is not a country safe
For a trans person to walk alone
For a black person to drive alone
For a woman to say No
to the wrong person
We have been telling you
that the refugees who do get through
say that surviving here
as poor people of color
with limited English
is harder
than what they survived
to get here
We have been telling you that
all of this has been happening
all of this time
before photo phones and social media
got you thinking about it
We have been telling you
how common open bigotry is
how dangerous latent prejudice is
and you did not really believe us
because of your own latent prejudice
which includes the latent classism
that had you believing
that the end of the factory town
and the end of family farm
and a generation of blue collar youth
marching into military hell
so they could have a place to eat
were sad things happening somewhere else
that wouldn't affect your life.
So, NOW you say 
your idea of America has been destroyed?
Well. Thank God something good has come from this.
America
was always a becoming
America
was never a prize in hand.
Go get some Langston Hughes in one hand,
and a shovel in the other--
We are ready to work beside you 
when you are.

Braced for Impact

Sometimes
I'm riding the bus
And I notice
My knuckles are white
Marks pressed into my palm
And my whole arm aching
From holding on so tight
To a bar
That I don't need
To be holding
At all.

Sometimes
I don't notice.

About Last Night

About Last Night

Somewhere the homeless man
who found a piano at Value Village last night
and sat down and played and played
for all the years since he'd last touched a piano
is starting to face the day today.
Somewhere the woman in the ballcap
who gave me a fist-bump for sitting on the thrift store floor
with my little one in my lap to read to him
who pulled over honking after we left
and threw herself out of her car crying
Could you not afford to buy him a book?
is starting to face the day today.
Somewhere the all black all poor 33rd Ave basketball boys
who knocked out the best game of the summer
in the pot-holed little parking lot somebody put up a hoop in
and spent five solid minutes chanting Game Over, Game Over
just so the game wouldn't be over and home to bed
with school in the morning
are starting to face the day today.
And so are you.
Be gentle, day

Poem: The Busker

The Busker

When the sun shone, the grasshopper fiddled.

A reel to greet the first light and a jig as the morning grew bright.

He waltzed the afternoon away, put a promenade to the end of the day,

And fell down sleeping where he stood in the middle of a night-long ballad.

The ants worked through it all.

When the breeze blew, the grasshopper danced.

Leaping high above the corn, flashing wings among the thorns.

Spinning through the falling leaves, the grasshopper courted every breeze,

And his shadow capered over the ants as they marched like mad.

The ants worked through it all.

When the first frost came, the grasshopper crumpled.

His joints froze.  His fiddle cracked.

He lay alone on the barren ground.

Then the ants came. They surrounded him.  

They spoke as ants speak, 

In one voice.

"Music-maker who kept us moving,

Spirit of the harvest plenty, 

one gift more we ask of you.

Speak of the sun to our winterborn,

Talk of the greentime that will return.

No one else could tell it so true."

They carried him home.