Two Upon Four of Us

Two upon four of us
Thank God there aren’t more of us

You never escape our kind of poverty, not fully. Nowadays I overhear a woman on the way to the chip stand say she’s starving, see how her bum spills out of her waistband, remembering all them winter days walking to school with my fist bunched into my belly, trying  to fool myself into believing there was something in it aside from the hunger that carved me hollow, made my cold bones ache all day, clots of hair in my comb and gaps where second teeth never came in.

 

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  1. rochellewisoff

    Dear Josh,

    This has to be the most well written run on sentence since Michael Chabon. A raw picture of starvation and poverty, not to mention the irony of the woman “starving” as she lumbers toward the chip stand. I could picture it even though I tried not to. Nicely done.

    Shalom,

    Rochelle

  2. Lynn Love

    This ia wonderful, Josh. That image of abject poverty and gnawing hunger feels so real – that fist in the gut, so believable. And yes, the sickening woman ‘starving’ as she lumbers to eat. Just amazing

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