Jackleen Holton
ALLEGIANCE
The windows of the bank tower mirror us,
bodies elongated like shadows, moving
uptown with the current. At the stoplight, a hawk
emerges from the dark corridor between apartment
buildings, alights on an overflowing bin. The trash
collectors have been on strike for three weeks.
From behind dark sunglasses, I gaze on the faces
of the street people as they pass, their need held out
like empty cans. His cardboard folded up in one hand,
white mermaid cup in the other, a man crosses
the street, makes his way to his island. Today, the sign
might say Vietnam Vet or Anything Helps. Under his flannel,
he probably wears a black t-shirt with the word Jesus.
The other night in my car, waiting for the green arrow,
the same guy ambled toward me, silent but for that white
word afloat in the dark, and I knew, because James Taylor
had just sung that very name, that my luck would turn around
if only I could find something to give before the light changed.
And the pair walking toward me now, his downcast eyes, a cigarette
caught in her spidery lips, yank my mind back to a childhood
cul-de-sac, our neighbors a young mom and her gawky,
learning-disabled kid, the tender way they had with each other
its own language, their small house an island of refuge in a world
not built for either of them. Remembering this, I want not to fail
another small, critical test. I stop, dive into my purse,
come up with just one crumpled bill, hold out my offering.
But they’ve already gone past. The foot traffic surges
around me as if I’m an island against progress,
an ocean of sunglasses mirroring a lost woman waving
the little green flag of her country at half-mast.
Jackleen Holton’s poems have been published in journals including North American Review, Poet Lore, and RHINO Poetry, online venues such as Rattle’s Poets Respond, Poets Reading the News, and Mobius: A Journal of Social Change, and the anthology Not My President.
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