"The soapy grey water wouldn't protect my feet / from the prickly shards …" Courtesy of Rachael Tomster/flickr CC BY-NC 2.0.
“Put your shoes on,”
he says from the couch,
“There’s thorns on the porch,”
only I was knee-deep in the mop bucket.
The soapy grey water wouldn’t protect my feet
from the prickly shards
surrounding the double grill.
I never cared for steak.
Don’t know much about shish kabob,
but the residue from the chicken fat
beckons the roadrunners over the south wall,
where migrants crossover to work
the onion fields.
Another woman traipses
to pumice my toilet bowls
at four in the afternoon
in nondescript heels.
What will she eat tonight? Steak?
Or a fried onion sandwich,
what my mother’s mother ate
during the Depression.
My mother eats
grass-fed beef only. She buys it online
and they ship it on ice for $20 a pound.
The ad says
it’s better for everyone.