Privileges

I start the day by eating toast 

with avocado instead of egg 

to begin a new ritual in my new 

moss green kitchen 

where I hang a gold and blue image

of Our lady of Guadalupe 

to save me from misfortune 

because I have always been superstitious 

and now grateful 

that I don’t live anywhere near

Palestine, Ohio 

where a homeowner with a bad cough 

took a microphone and told the

CEO of Norfolk Southern 

that his company stinks. 

I too have a right to feel wounded 

by miseries bursting from pipes 

and potholes and cracked sidewalks 

across my state.

 

Inside me a loud cry

will not cease 

for I know there

is no savior, no path away

from slumped bodies tossed  

under feeways by big owners.

of everything.

The smoke of small fires drifts out 

from the underpasses 

so we cannot forget 

who sleeps there. 

But I have avocados, sonnets, 

leaves from Lake Chabot, a grandchild,

a plane ticket. 

I can look but not get

away. 

Meteorology

I only need to hear 

the first three notes 

in his voice to know 

he speaks the truth about his homework

so I say, Ok Have another 

of whatever he is asking for.  

My little man hasn’t figured out 

how well I know him.  

He doesn’t realize his First Grade heart beats 

inside a glass cage for all to see.  

He tells me, Miss Robbins says 

she has eyes 

in the back of her head 

but I think she’s just kidding, don’t you?

I am the meteorologist of his moods. 

I know what he’ll say and what he’ll do 

until the day a shadow darkens his upper lip. 

That’s when he changes passwords 

on all his devices. 

And when the How would I know? answer 

shoots down my every question.  

Warnings, slow, like a truck beeping in reverse. 

And then one night the roof blows open. 

A spray of cologne announces 

a blunt has just been lit.  

And the whispers of a girl wake me

in the middle of the night. 

Each dawn pulls him further from 

the glass cage into a steel vault

and me wondering, must I love

him harder or with more ease?

The answer, like an engine 
in a rusty old car, 

turns and turns but never catches.