Friday Musings

My hope and prayer is that the body of Christ in America will awake with holy boldness, a boldness content neither with silence nor mere words but that backs up those words with action and results. – Frank R. Wolf

Shining Through the Poverty – By Anjie Kokan

My poverty is a two-week late child support check,

a food stamp account in the form of a credit card,

and an SSI deposit for my son's autism. It's energy

assistance for gas and electric and a cell phone bill

for safety. My poverty is a possibility that I won't get

paid for the job I love because the funding isn't guaranteed,

but my poverty is faithful and keeps on working anyway.

It twists $5 from the nowhere of my arm because

my 10-year-old daughter's needs will be fulfilled,

she convinces me, with a cool shade of mahogany hair dye.

My poverty sparkles in the satin bluegrass eyes of my small

boy when the state food card buys him strawberry ice-cream.

It rattles everywhere we go in that cute, clunky car that runs

on prayers I sometimes forget to say. My poverty is backyard

lit by the flicker of the yellow finch feeding on the seeds

of the drooping lemon queen. I dress my poverty in a light

crocheted sweater from Good Will over a long, faded skirt

handed down from a friend of a friend of a friend. From the bargain

bin at Walgreen's, my poverty colors my mouth peasant pink,

and I say to the children, Smile with me, as I tilt their little faces past

the tomatoes and toward the camera. They are good children

and do as they are told, and we gloss over the secret most people

don't know because, damn, do we wear our poverty well.