D. Curren
“I’m older and I didn’t think I was going to have any more kids. Not that I didn’t want any, I just didn’t think I would have anymore. Deep down I think it’s what I’ve always wanted. A family. We got our family. Just me and him. And it’s good. It’s good.”
-Pauline Baker
Second Chance
- Pauline Baker had her first son, Joey, twenty-seven years ago and had to give him to her parents because she couldn’t support him. Donnie is her five-year-old son that she has been able to keep with the help of welfare
- Pauline bared fresh life at a young age
- wed to a man nine years her senior
- I found out that he was “into young females”
- and got out of there
- Poverty swept its branch across her cheek
- My parents loved my kid. I knew
- that he would be taken care of...and would not
- go without anything. I felt that he was
- better off...I couldn’t even buy him a pair of shoes
- What would a corn plant do?
- A picket or a palm tree?
- What would a rose bush do
- if there were no water, no sun, no carbon dioxide?
- What would they do if their roots
- embedded themselves into the poor?
- Her second chance, Donnie
- was slipping through the wet wooden boards
- stained with tired swollen eyes
- Poverty was in the howl of the wind,
- the stinging chill of darkness, and once again
- she began to take root
- Welfare would quench her thirst, warm her leaves,
- let her breathe
- She would not
- have to let this seed go
-
-Sarah Lerma