Poetry: Cleaning Money

It's only day 4 of this poetry pledge drive and I already feel like it's been a month . . . .This is going to be tough. At least with my usual blogging, I almost always take the weekend off. With this challenge, there's no reprieve until MAY! But enough bellyaching - I brought this on myself and I am enjoying it.

As with yesterday's poem, today's poem came from something old. This time it wasn't anything resembling a poem though, so I don't have an original to share with you. There were just ideas, snippets of possible lines scribbled on a loose piece of 3-hole-punched lined paper. Now, they're this . . .


Cleaning Money

Mom cleaned everything, tops
To bottoms, insides and outs, even
For other people, for money. She cleaned, even
When everything already shone shiny like

A new dime.

My brother was always taking
Something or other prescribed
Or illegal - once it was money
From my piggy bank. In his room,

He thought he was sly,
But he wasn't able to cover
The smoking up with incense
Or his wallet. Mom tried
Scrubbing the yellowed wallpaper
Until it was clear

We were all going
To have to chip in
To strip it down, like large patches
Of dead skin when he left.

Later, he'd call
Collect, on mom's dime,
Asking for some of her cleaning
Money. Nothing she could do
But clean the world
Around him.

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