Matthew Lippman uses an innovative trope to reflect on poverty, homelessness, and a middle class man’s fraught relationship with these categories.
—
Outer Space
When I gave the homeless
Man
50 cents
I was probably being
An astronaut of wealth
Because all things
Are relative in space
But in the space
Between my hand and
His hand
There was
Poverty
So I gave him 2 quarters
But first I said
Good morning
And he seemed surprised
With his shopping cart
Filled with cans and bottles
His rocketship
To a planet called
Eatery
Tonight I will eat
Pizza and Brussels sprouts
And stir fried tofu
In my own middle class poverty
And he will eat things I
Don’t know
What he will eat
But I do want to think
That if he were outside
My house at 6 p.m.
I’d ask him in
But I know I won’t
Because I’ve seen him before
His face in our recycling bin
Rummaging for bottles
I’ve seen him
Flying down my street
In his astronaut suit
And never once
Have I offered him
Oranges or tea
Or pizza with the crust on
Because I’m scared
Of everything
That solar system is
The cold dark one
We all live in
With all of its
Gasses and big
Uninhabitable planets
That I feel myself orbiting around
Most times
And today I guess
The only way
It occurred to me
To get out of its endless void
Was to give him
2 quarters
To say Good morning
Then light speed it
The hell
Out of there
Knowing full well
And soon enough
I’d slam face first
Into some terrible
Meteoric space dust
That would ruin us
In a hot second.
***
Read more poems from Matthew Lippman–including Best of the Net nominee “When I Was Pregnant.”
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