When Carol Manley sent this poem I was struck by its
similarity to Robert Clarke’s, published here on Oct. 13. While
Clarke encountered a beggar in Lisbon, Manley only had to travel as far as
downtown Springfield to find the same kind of need. Both poems, a short
haiku sequence and this longer free verse, express how inadequately we are
dealing with poverty in our midst.
Untitled
In the oppressive August heat
Even the shadow of
the new
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library
Offers little
relief.
I’m heading back to work late
I’ve eaten too
many falafels for lunch
My employee ID hangs
limp and sweaty around
my neck
on its lanyard.
Heading North, I pass a woman going
South
Her grim expression warding off strangers
protecting the
plastic wrapped bundles
Of what is probably everything she
owns.
Even in this heat that feels like weight
On my shoulders
she wears
Too many clothes.
I mentally inventory my
pockets.
If she looks my way I tell myself
I will give her
money
but she hides from my eyes
in defensive
homelessness.
The minute I reach the curb some man
plants himself
in front of me
His cap says he’s a veteran of some war
You see
that homely woman? He asks
I tell him he means home-less.
He
pushes his indignant sputtering face
toward my hot and sweaty
one.
She wanted to go down on me for a dollar, he says.
A dollar,
I say, that’s very sad
I wish I’d given her ten.
— Carol Manley
Carol Manley is
primarily a fiction writer whose stories, poems and essays have been
published in small journals around the country. She studied writing at
Sangamon State University and earned a master’s degree in English
from UIS. She was the 1995 recipient of the Friends of Lincoln Library
Writer of the Year Award for poetry.
This article appears in Oct 27 – Nov 2, 2005.
