Carla Drysdale
Earning My Keep
Each week, we’d go out for fries and cheeseburgers,
my stomach a cave under my watering mouth.
Our wan waitress, twelve like me, carried our plates,
served us cokes, her mouth a line of string pulled straight.
My stepfather would say: You see, she works to earn
her keep. We need to get you a job.
That summer I snapped suckers from tobacco plants
taller than me. I worked in Ontario’s sandy soil until
I had to stop, struck by mono. School started up
again in the fall and the decades stood and fell
and stamped him out. Now I’m looking for work
again to pay the bills, to buy my boys what they need
and don’t need. At home they sit in front of screens
sleep in when they can, do their chores
work at being kind and doing well in school
while I work to earn their keep.
Carla Drysdale is the author of the poetry collections Little Venus (Tightrope Books, 2009) and Inheritance (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in Spiraling, Public Pool, Cleaver Magazine, PRISM International, The Same, LIT, Literary Review of Canada, Canadian Literature, The Fiddlehead, Global City Review, and Literary Mama, among other journals, and in the anthology Entering the Real World: VCCA Poets on Mt. San Angelo. In May, 2014 she was awarded PRISM’s annual Earle Birney poetry prize for her poem, “Inheritance.” Born in London, Ontario, she lives with her husband and two sons in Ornex, France. To learn more, visit www.carladrysdale.com.
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