Homeless In Nome Poem by Donal Mahoney

I was beautiful once,
the homeless lady tells
the young worker

who’s filling out forms
before assigning the lady
a bed for the night.

She’s been homeless
for months since
arriving from Dallas.

She's looking for a job
and maybe a husband
but hasn’t found either.

The worse thing, she says,
is the weather in Nome.
It’s nothing like Dallas.

With snow in the winter
and rain in the summer
in Nome she needs

something to crawl under.
Often it’s a man, she says,
with no home either.