You receive a letter. When did that
last happen? (When the post office
they’re trying so hard to privatize worked.)
Creased, handwritten
in pencil on lined paper, many pages and
misspellings. You received one like this
years back, but that was recommending Jesus.
Here there are only wounds the system, not
identified as such, keeps open:
the bad pay, no breaks, no job.
One kid’s condition, bills.
Two stops in one night, an earlier beatdown,
cop breaking a taillight then ticketing the broken
taillight. Illness. Artless,
whatever grey words come to hand, the only
(unconscious, effective) image a styrofoam
bowl from McDonalds the writer uses
again and again, washing carefully.
Not asking for money, or anything.
You scan and file the pages and respond.
Since you aren’t asking for money,
I can only assume you heard of me somehow,
and thought I could write about you, and that that
might help. But you must understand:
I’m a poet, and no one reads poetry
except those who already sympathize
as much as I and are as [substitute something
for “impotent”] as I. You’d do better
to contact a novelist [insert names].
But remember: minorities disapprove
when someone not in a given minority
writes fiction, however sympathetic, about it.
I mention this because you haven’t
specified your [race]. – You go on
three more lines, trying to inject
human warmth, then print and sign (that may
be worth something, someday), and fold.
Take out a twenty, hesitate, add another,
then realize there’s no return address.