I Knew I Wasn’t Poor

by Jan Beatty –

I Knew I Wasn’t Poor

I knew I wasn’t poor,

because I had a choice:

buy tampons or birth control pills.

I shoplifted.

When I opened the oven door,

splitting the closet-sized kitchen in half,

my only plan was heat.

The ice smooth on the inside of the windows,

the no money to pay the bill.

I knew I wasn’t poor,

because I could always eat

at the restaurant where I waitressed.

I never went hungry.

I waited for the rich customer,

bored with her herb chicken—

to toss it: No, I don’t want to take it

with me. We’re going to the theater.

I secreted that half-plate of turned-

over food, and like a miser or explorer,

stashed it in my locker in the restaurant’s

dark hallway. I had no shame, I was finding

my solution: how to eat, how to live,

I felt accomplishment. No insurance for

my beater car, I threw parking tickets in

the backseat with a flurry. I grew rich in

my imaginings. The People’s Clinic when

I was too sick to last it out. I knew I wasn’t poor,

and when my clothes wore raggedy and

I got angry at what I couldn’t have, I walked

into the department store with an empty bag,

filling my heart, filling the holes

that were everywhere.

—Jan Beatty, Jackknife: New and Selected Poems,

University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017

 

jan beatty’s fourth full-length collection, TheSwitching/Yard, was named one of “30 New Books That Will Help You Rediscover Poetry” by Library Journal. The Huffington Post named her as one of ten women writers for “required reading.” Her other books include Red Sugar, Boneshaker, and Mad River, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Beatty is hostand producer of Prosody on NPR affiliate WESA-FM, featuring the work of national writers. She is director of Creative Writing at Carlow University, where she runs the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops and teaches in the MFA program.