5 January, 2019
Ordinary Psalm With Severe Neglect
I was working day shift at the County Shelter,
102 degrees in the tattered shade of that street
and this kid, maybe 5 or 6, had been scrubbed clean,
her hair oiled for lice. Her teeth rotted brown
from sucking juice bottles to sleep, she was busy
climbing over the dirty couch in the day room,
though when I offered, she sat next to me,
slipped her small weight against mine. The TV
was tuned to Animal Planet, that episode
where Arctic caribou shudder the tundra,
travelling hundreds of miles over snow, each footstep
placed exactly in the one before, the one behind,
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