The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do

The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do
without. 'To have, as my mother says, a wish in one hand
and shit in another. That was in answer to I wish I had
an Instamatic camera and a father. Wish in one hand, she
said, shit in another. She still says it. When she tells me
she wishes I were there to have some of her bean soup
she answers herself. Wish in one hand, she says, shit in another.
Poverty, like a sonnet, is a good teacher. The kind that raps your
knuckles with a ruler but not the kind that throws a dictionary
cross the room and hits you in the brain with all the words
that ever were. Boxed fathers buried deep are still fathers,
teacher says. Do without the. Without and. Without hot
dogs in your baked beans. A sonnet is a mother. Every word
a silver dollar. Shit in one hand, she says. Wish in another.