A Plate of Rainwater

Dan Cuddy

When there’s nothing
A plate of rainwater is something

You could go for days
A dog with a tongue like a tail
Wagging, lapping up
The condensing steam off somebody else’s coffee

Your eyes could get that far away look
A car with luggage piled in the back seat

One white shirt, a tie
Red like a tongue
On a wire hanger
Hung on a hook

You hope you sell
Your life
To the first corporation
Available

What have you done?
Lately?

You have lived by your wits
Bushy eyebrows, eyelashes carwash brushes
Attitude a trash-compacter
Sincerity grinded out somehow

You are given a plate of rainwater
Told to sit
Water comes from the sky
Trickles down

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Author’s note: What inspired it? I was thinking about the economy and trickle down ecobomics. What trickles down? Rainwater is the only thing that truly trickles down. Starting out and maybe finishing up in the American economy is a game of hustle. You don't have anything but your wits and perseverance to get yourself through. I worked 30 years for the late Maryland State Job Service. I've met a lot of people looking for a job.

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Dan Cuddy is currently an editor of the Loch Raven Review. Most recently he has had poems published in the End of 83, Broadkill Review, Welter, the Twisted Vine Literary Journal, the Pangolin Review, Madness Muse Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, the Rats’s Ass Review and forthcoming in Gargoyle.