After Mother C Makes Morning Toast
Paul Cordeiro
She brooms the sidewalk with what
the self-righteous call a grim goofy grin.
They call her fool to take their trash
out to the curb, to make their beds like a housemaid
when they have flexible fingers
but don't care to help appreciate her morning labors
and complain that she streaks and burns
the ironing or doesn't make the tomato sauce
watery or dry enough for their sensitive taste buds.
She usually runs out to her sidewalk post alone
and sweeps off the steps of road dust and yew clippings
and fills the paper lawn bags she buys herself
with one good ear cocked to the noisy steel passing.
While the dead ear faces the dumb vinyl-sided tenement house
and its complaining and rude obscenities inside,
she strains to see what she's doing with her one good eye.
The other eyeball hangs wrapped over itself a bat wing eyelid.
When she leans squinting on the broomhandle,
the light protects her stiff permanented follicles from harm
as it makes an invisible dented hard hat
that never gets windblown, knocked off.
