What Has Not Changed Poem by Romella Kitchens

What Has Not Changed



What Has Not Changed

In the evening, the ones that clean and cook head home.
No ride,
the ones that employer having paid them little and not
offered transportation then made humorous comments
concerning such...Felt larger and better until foreclosure loomed.
I spy them at the Bower Hill bus stop and others.
Some in hospital uniforms.
Some in plain clothes, trying to stay awake. Working in difficult
conditions to afford change. And, blamed even then for no
success beyond that. No matter who or what pushed brooms at them
despite their qualifications. No matter what domestic they were forced
into.

Day workers. Chefs. Maids. Nurses aids. Low paid lab staff.
Caretakers of all types. Culinary graduates doing all the tormenting work
in the kitchen, while the others take breaks and stay clean.
Office assistants dreaming about cars as their hands
mimic ice shattered glass. College graduates in a world afraid they'll succeed....
Maintenance in a un-maintained world. Maintenance in a world left
messy because it is someone else's class, status and job to clean it up.

Here comes the very cold.
Here comes snow in a worn-down coat.
The bus is very late or pulls off seeing you as you run for it...
Not in Alabama. In Pittsburgh not 50 years ago. Now.

POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
If people must spend a lifetime doing work which includes sweeping then, the manner in which I will sweep will include a broom with thick strands of honesty. The domestic is not always a wine. She or he is a human being who elected to find honest work in a world which not always but sometimes stutters on that concept not less an under paid cook's gourmet rendering of equality.
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Romella Kitchens

Romella Kitchens

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
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