Out of the Dust: Winter 1935

Too hard to
watch their lungs clog with dust,
like our chickens, suffocated.

Restless,
I tangle in the dusty sheets,
sending the sand flying,
cursing the grit against my skin,
between my teeth,
under my lids,
swearing I’ll leave this forsaken place.

And later,
when the clouds lift,
the farmers, surveying their fields,
nod their heads as
the frail stalks revive,
everyone, everything, grateful for this moment,
free of the
weight of dust.

Will they sow wheat on his grave,
where the buffalo
once grazed?

My father stares at me
while I sit across from him at the table,
while I wash dishes in the basin,
my back to him,
the picked and festered bits of my hands in agony.

Till ten,
when Arley stands up from the piano,
to announce we raised thirty-three dollars
for infantile paralysis,
a little better than last year.

Till ten,
when Arley stands up from the piano,
to announce we raised thirty-three dollars
for infantile paralysis,
a little better than last year.

The older girls,
Elizabeth and LoRaine, helped Miss Freeland
cook,
and Hillary and I,
we served and washed,
our ears ringing with the sound of satisfied children.

We share it at lunch with our guests,
the family of migrants who have moved out from dust
and Depression
and moved into our classroom.

They left a couple weeks after the baby came,
all of them crammed inside that rusty, old truck.

Backstage,
we were seventeen amateur acts,
our wild hearts pounding,
our lips sticking to our teeth

"It’s mostly ladies in those classes,” he says,
"they take bookkeeping and civics,
and something called business English."

Pete Guymon took ill with dust pneumonia.

It sat,
filled with turkeys and heavy hens
waiting for delivery,
it sat out in front of Pete’s drafty shack,
and sits there still,
the cream curdling
the apples going soft.

If Ma could put her arm across my shoulder
sometime,
or stroke back my hair,
or sing me to sleep, making the soft sounds,
the reassuring noises,
that no matter how brittle and sharp life seemed
no matter how brittle and sharp she seemed,
she was still my ma who loved me,
then I think I wouldn’t be so eager to go.