Aight Poem by Karen Siewert

Pants sagging low
Skirts riding high
Speaking broken English
Learned in a broken home
Headed by a woman who's had too many children too soon
Expecting others to feed them
While chasing the next high with a cancer stick dangling from the lip


Not the man rising long before the sun
Kissing his woman goodbye before walking out the door
To work at a job that defines him while saying nothing about who he is
Hustling on the side to keep the electric on another month

Not the woman who's made her children the center of her world
Cooking, cleaning, sewing and working
Helping with homework
Teaching to tie a shoe
Reading to sleep after a long day on her feet

A smudge
A dot
A deficit

Not the woman studying through the night
Rising to take her children to Sunday school
Not the father washing the Sunday dinner dishes
Daily reading a page from Encyclopedia Britannica
Older siblings washing small faces
Accompanying them to school up cold cement steps

Not the husband riding an austere metal car
Pants sharply creased, tie bobbing against Adam's apple
Arriving first and leaving last
Eating cold egg sandwiches so his children can have the last of the luncheon meat
He and his wife sharing the last cup of coffee
Even though he takes his black and she takes hers with cream and sugar

Not the silver-haired grandmother
That comes to live with the woman
Whose husband was 'protected' and 'served' to death
The life insurance enough
To cover funeral costs
To allow her to purchase a second-hand made-in-America car
Because she only buys domestic

Not the woman in dress and heels
Who hurries from her job at Sak's
To meet her boyfriend
To celebrate their second anniversary

Next week she will be with her girlfriends
Laughing over a home-cooked meal
Celebrating nothing at all
While across town at his best friend's
Her boyfriend will be doing the same

A smudge
A dot
A deficit

Aight