Layaway

09Mar09

As long as it was from K-Mart and could be put
on layaway for 3 months I could pick out anything I wanted
at Christmas and birthdays.

This let mom make easy payments
that weren’t easy, could never have been
with dad’s salary, new Western needs.

School clothes, too;
Outfit after outfit, my faith placed in them to
make me cool. A suede jacket at full price because mom
wanted everything for me.

Store credit cards touting incentives
like a shit storm of poverty
looked good to us.
We turned our back on layaway.

No payments for a year! We were rats
to alcohol, freed from the layaway years
of waiting and paying and waiting. Working for something. Owning it.
We signed up, two litres of cola for the trouble

and bought cameras (still and moving),
“Italian” textiles made in Korea, shipped by way of Italy,
monogrammed hip flasks, noise canceling headphones,
television satellites, phones we touch more
than our lovers

that led to magnificent cars,
ripping out perfectly good countertops,
a new refrigerator just like the old one but stainless,
if by stainless you mean “impossible to keep clean”.

Now, bilked good
with no chicken left on the bone,
having borrowed against things we are borrowing,
traded wives for nannies, Wii Fits, carryout,
it only makes sense that nothing fails,

lest we remember it takes two hands to spit
and shake on it,
we run these death camps,
there are too few boats for all of us the next time it floods.

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