Home Visit

Every so often, my mother would bag up

our outgrown clothes and drop them off

at the house with the tarpaper siding.

I would hang back in the car. One of the boys

was in my class. No one wanted to sit by him.

Does every act of charity come with its own

vicious undertow? I feel it. How I watched

my best friend pick a fight and bloody

that kid’s nose. How I watched him slip and fall

in a pair of my shoes. How he spit

and swore the mercy wearing

my brother’s cowboy western shirt.

published in San Pedro River Review, Fall 2017