You’re White Trash Not Wordsworth And
Cigarettes Are Your Currency
by Chrissy Stegman
Your aunt will buy you
fried chicken from the corner
store with her food stamps when
you’re 12 and she's your babysitter.
You’ll get drunk
because you’re with
the ghost of your cousin's
silence, you just can’t hear her eyes
tell you she is
being raped
by her mom’s boyfriend and
the air and her body are filled
with the smoke from his
cigarettes.
Your cousin is younger than you
but that makes her
older than you.
Your aunt will buy you
generic cigarettes and
someone will say
let’s get some
peach schnapps and
dodge the bullets on the way
to the liquor store and
it will be your cousin. She won’t be
dead. Not yet.
You can use your last
two quarters for her eyes instead
of cigarettes.
You’re never too poor
for the river Styx.
You can be in a smoke-filled
room with so many cigarettes
it will make a gray cloud and
you can wander,
lonely as that. That can
make you cry and make your mouth
taste the dirt of a place
where you can’t grow the yellow
flowers. The dirt in your mouth
won’t be what bothers you.
It will be the constant
pavement.
You can be an unlucky ghost.
You can also hear
the bullets flying.
From your mouth.
In the air.
Outside the house that
isn't a house but
a boat
you can float around
the town in. You can
always find new places
to fill your sail with suffering.
You won’t have a choice.
And you can say:
I gotta go home.
You can learn you
will never find a home
until you are grown.
Oh, and you can bring
your cigarettes
for the road.
About the Author
Chrissy Stegman has five kids - 3 bio; 2 bonus. She loves reading and writing poetry, reading the faces of strangers, finding forests, and holding her husband's hand. On the surface, she's pretty boring, but she thinks her poetry makes up for her day-to-day mediocrity. She went to school. She did some stuff. She's here now. That's all that matter.