In this brave and candid book, Michael V. Smith explores the experience of the modern working poor, with poems that look at sex, sexuality, and the sex trade in a straightforward manner, as well as a counterpoint of poems inspired by the American photographer William Gale Gedney, who documented the lives of the poor in Kentucky during the 1960s.

Lonely

Their mother sits on the porch,
so close to their dad in his armchair
he feels the night shift
each time she swings
her hair, tying blue ribbons
at the back. The middle sister
–Sister Three of Five
she calls herself–
helps make two bows.
The air tastes of cool damp grass,
the sun has abandoned the yard.
The children want to stand here,
barefoot on the floorboards,
relaxed, all their skin relaxed
and open to the sounds of the woods.
They each would like
to be the one who asks the question
which keeps their parents home tonight,
their father talking
the sun back over the trees.

 

Intellect

She is the dark child who refuses
to bathe, who wears the same dress
worn through, her hair pulled
back days later only because her mother
pins it better than she cares. She eats
what she can carry to the woods, sleeps
next to the open window when she’s home.
One night her mother woke to her shadow
beyond the doorframe, walking away,
her daughter, the girl with ideas.

 

Distance

The child in the window
seems as thin as his breath
fogging the glass.
The world disappears
with a sigh from his small lungs
as he waits for the mist
to uncloud the street below.
The child is more patient
than the man watching
from the sidewalk
who wants the boy
to hurry up
& wipe the glass.
They are alone together
the boy curled on his windowsill
the man growing cold
outside, his feet damp
from the walk & the freezing snow.
In the next room
a woman is asleep.
She dreams a husband
who wants back in, a boy
so frail these days
she doesn’t dare.