Today is Thursday
A plastic cup stands silent vigil
A ring of milk clings to the bottom of the blue
I just threw away four pizza crusts.
Tonight I cleaned up after people at work.
When I get home I will smell popcorn
last Sunday's paper is still on the living room floor.
It was pillaged for the television listing,
stepped on, pushed into a messy pile by feet.
The news remains unread. Nothing happened on
Sunday. Unless something happens on television
nothing ever happens at my parents' house.
next to the lamp on the end table.
The cup is blue, my favorite color. My shirt is blue, too.
The lamp has two bulbs, one of which does not work.
Something always doesn't work in my parents' house.
I often don't work.
The furnace does not work.
Both the washing machine and dryer have broken.
After my mother works for nine or ten hours
she comes home and makes dinner. Then she goes
to the Laundromat to keep her family in
Clean clothes.
Our greatest poverty is clean laundry.
plastic cup. Tomorrow when I wake up,
I will place the rim of the cup beneath my nose.
I will inhale the new smell the old milk has made.
It is not a bad smell at all. It reminds me of
my childhood, when a lot of things were first broken.
Back then we could not afford to let milk get old.
Back then I ate government cheese and peanut butter.
I ate my Cheerios with water.
For a few drops of milk, I would have held that
Blue cup over my pink tongue for hours.
Days maybe.
We throw a lot of food away at my parents' house.
Only four people live in the house, yet we
accumulate bags of garbage every day.
I wonder if my parents remember when
we had nothing to throw away.
A group of women ate there. They were leaving
as I collected their dishes from the dining room.
One of those women looked at the plate in my hand.
She said..."remains of the day...something...something..."
I couldn't hear all of what she said
because her friends laughed at her joke.
There were eight quarters of pita bread left on a plate
and two kabobs with onions still skewered.
I don't like onions either.
though I won't find out where the smell is coming from.
I won't drink the milk in the refrigerator.
I won't read last Sunday's newspaper
but I won't watch television either.
All that remains of my day are four slices of pizza
left over from work. I will throw the crusts away.
from June, 2000 issue