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Brandie Booker

Shame's Lesson 1

My Master's degree does not matter here. It has not kept nor saved me. It hangs in a wooden frame on a placid blue wall in my
living room, but today I must perform the six-month ceremonial pilgrimage to "the aid office" for food stamps, for my children
and I.
              We are hungry and I have not provided the sustenance I had hoped to.

I've been sitting in Public Aid offices for ten years. They are all the same. A pair of poor, black eyes on a poster strikes poetic
contrast to the slogan -- Work pays. The bland brick behind it bulges and swells, spilling over with
some fear but mostly shame.
              Please don't stare into them too long. They will prick you, that pair of poor, black eyes.

And the children whimper in the tongues of their ancestors.
The parade of names float from tight lips behind the counter, over a P.A. in a celebratory muffled, flat chord.
Bodies stir. Shuffling respondents form lines of
light-stepping grandfathers, young mothers of many, and a few fathers.

A ten-year lesson in humility still unmastered. Ten years of trying to (sometimes unsuccessfully) shield my eyes from becoming
like others I hate to acknowledge for too long.
              I fear I've failed to keep my children from this predisposition.
              Even the caseworkers, behind the counter have seceded.

The more things change

Hiding behind the lens of the past ain't gone last 'cause the fact is--
I've changed.
Short curly locks replace the long pig-tails
that once hanged down my back
streets look the same--
places where we played children's games; Winfield Park, and the strike out box,
still painted on the side of the old Canada Dry--

Now drunken, dim reds and browns replace eyes which once shone bright.
Have you forgotten those Autumn nights we'd…
"Wish on the first star we see… "
Wishes that were so dear to us,
Brother, what happened to the years-- to us?
And the plans we made?
I suppose we changed,                              but I remember,

as wild children we said, "I can't wait to be grown."
And when I consider my heart, my hands, my steps,
I get angry because it was you who left.
               I see the sun setting, so I'll keep
my eyes upturned towards the sky, hoping
maybe we could go back            make a wish,
and then dance to the jingle of today's               last        ice-cream truck.

Now, wish-less squandered time, you only call when you're in prison.
I listen to the background noises and
imagine-- faces of the long line of men behind you,

who I hope to never see. Imagining one day, their
loud laughter lacking fear, quieted
in freedom.

I imagine that your calls will stop

when you            beat this case .     And imagine
periods at the end of your sentences instead of tears, hidden
behind the black-boxed base of the payphone.
Listening, I take a deep breath, look upward and wish for change.

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