A WHOLE LOT OF NOTHING
Kurt Nimmo
She had gone
over to the neighbor
and the neighbor had taken her
to the store for a bottle. I had
taken everything--money, car,
checkbook, even the pennies we
kept in a jar--in a half-ass attempt
to starve the booze out of her.
She waited for me to go
off to work--and then went
over to the neighbor's place.
She told me this later,
after I had found the bottle
and had poured it out. Drunk,
she tried to light a cigarette,
and nearly caught her hair on fire.
I wanted to go over to the neighbor
and tell the woman to mind her own
business. The neighbor woman
is on welfare. Even so, she has
a new car. How does that work,
I asked myself. I have a ten year old
car. It wants to die. I'm doing some-
thing wrong. I was born male,
white, and condemned. I will work
until I drop--and then they will
dig a hole, throw me in,
and stab a tombstone into the brittle
white of my bones. Later, a kid
on angel dust will spray paint the
word FUCK on my name. Even later
still, the state will dig me up, dump
my rotted crust a hundred yards
to the north, and run a freeway
over my sacred ground.
On the freeway, welfare mothers
locked inside new cars will
chase after dehydrated dreams.
In the stale background
of now, however,
I pour my wife's drug of choice
down the drain. She tried to light
a cigarette just now and
nearly set herself aflame.
Beyond her, through a window
and in the street, wards of the state
play with shiny new plastic toys.
They wait--heavy
with the blindness of child-
hood--for their first
chance at a whole
lot of nothing.
