this is not what my English teacher meant when she said i'd be a poet

this is the world as i understand it
where electricity in all it's invisible power is turned off-
or almost. almost: every month, the notice: Pay Now
or Pay Later, or something like that. We Pay Now and
Later, either way there are enough warnings and calls
to take the entire month of April and choke the life
right out of it, Spring and it's chicks and flowers.

if we are on a see-saw, then you
are the fat kid, flinging us into the air with your mean
mouth covered in chocolate, cram another Spring Egg
into that pie hole, you Spring chicken gutless jerk.
i am tired of bills that are never paid and love never
fully bloomed and eggs never laid and all this work,
work, work.

this is the world as i understand it
a ludicrous leveraging of dwindling resources
a pocketbook thin to empty and a credit card
charged to the max with interest rates no human
woman could ever hope to pay off, which means
unless something really new and different happens
this is never going to end.

maggie may ethridge