day SIX HUNDRED and TWENTY SIX

I Don't Write Political Poems

We fed our kids

fish sticks

and we ate corn dogs

We knew it was poison

Sometimes we didn't eat

My mother fed me fat noodles

in watered-down tomato sauce

covered in spices from a plastic bottle

After three or four days

I imagined them worms

writhing in blood

In sixth grade

I had a cough for six months

but my only doctor trip

was for scabies

They itched in hard

red welts, living there

They were contagious

a poor people problem

My grandmother

read us the Bible at night instead

instead of what

no one ever said

I don't write political poems because

I'm no expert

on the economy or budgets

or cost cutting

measures

I am an expert

on being poor

of making a box of Kraft

Macaroni and Cheese stretch

like bloody fingers across a white

plate in a white apartment

There's some money now

and we give what we can

or so we say

but when I'm writing this

there's electricity, T.V,

an open can of  Diet Coke

half-empty and flat

that I'll throw away

How many people

could I feed on what I

spend on Diet Coke

A number

Still others wait

while I wonder what

could have been done

with all the money

spent on beer

and whiskey

and cigarettes

all the cool poet tricks

Still others

hoard cash

in the name of Jesus

but it's hard to eat a tank

and bullets don't make good doctors

Sometimes the noodles had hamburger

most of the time they didn't

Out of habit, my sister waited

to go to the doctor

and now it's too late

--Daniel Crocker