Bag (a revision) by DjWhite

When it's done,

all that's left is what

I've carried


I'm an over looked

forgotten brown


oh  selfish  hedonist

you need me


and will find me

somewhere

Krogers

a State Store

hidden
at the end of check-out lines

smooth and flat.



My progenitors have been

gone for hundreds of years,

but, I'm still here

wasteful  wasted

dead as they are

dead as you


You won't remember me
and don't want too

So, cruel

your lessons learned,

narcissistic madness


such bankrupt morality
unfolds

my creases looking

for God

yet you


stuff the Y
of my thighs

with fifths of  E & J

or sweaty cans of  211s

then leave
parts of me


under a Canal street bridge

tenting

men in the middle of winter

or

emptied

crumbled

flapped up

against a neighbor's fence.

Wiring Home by Rita Dove

 RITA DOVE

Lest the wolves loose their whistles
and shopkeepers inquire,
keep moving, though your knees flush
red as two chapped apples,
keep moving, head up,
past the beggar's cold cup,
past the kiosk's
trumpet tales of
odyssey and heartbreak-
until, turning a corner, you stand,
staring: ambushed
by a window of canaries
bright as a thousand
golden narcissi.

**Rita Dove is a former US Poet Laureate** 

Modern American Poetry