Family Dollar

I lived a long time as both woman and girl it nearly killed me

I don’t want an ordinary moment any longer no more gestures

Such as the oaks neither shake nor fidget in observation

And the objects worth discussing dissipate oh how they leak

Away from the creeds claiming one can get ahead of the pain

By naming see how the green will change you it really will

I went into the green with a vine across my back and from the mud

Came the pattern before the light could enter light turned

And denied us, the moss struggled toward the yellow

A fine pollen came up from the world and the road made this

Shape in the powder: What’s wrong with right here?

There’s a cape behind my eyes and the body inside it wallows

Across patches of burned up grass untender and lines perpendicular

To the gate I couldn’t open an outrage regularly loiters

Isn’t that weird, how talent carries time?

Nothing’s resolved today and the hours are dim but vital

A body in a cloak upon a road rolling sweetly through the mind

Place this road in some distant future just like that foregone past

And then offensively remember how women don’t exist

Get head of the pain the ages counsel, make plenty of money

Copyright Credit: Hannah Brooks-Motl, "Family Dollar." Copyright © 2017 by Hannah Brooks-Motl. Used by permission of the author for PoetryNow, a partnership between the Poetry Foundation and the WFMT Radio Network.

Source: PoetryNow (2017)