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Column 079

Work Shy

Intro by Ted Kooser
10.04.2006

The news cov­er­age of Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na gave Amer­i­ca a vivid look at our poor and pow­er­less neigh­bors. Here Alex Phillips of Mass­a­chu­setts con­dens­es his obser­va­tions of our country’s under­class into a wise, tough lit­tle poem. 

Work Shy

To be poor and raise skinny children.
To own nothing but skinny clothing.
Skinny food falls in between cracks.
Friends cannot visit your skinny home.
They cannot fit through the door.
Your skinny thoughts evaporate into
the day or the night that you cannot
see with your tiny eyes.

God sticks you with the smallest pins
and your blood, the red is diluted.
Imagine a tiny hole, the other side
of which is a fat world and how
lost you would feel. Of course,
I’m speaking to myself.
How lost I would feel, and how dangerous.

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We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from Under a Paper Trellis (Factory Hollow Press), by permission of the author. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.