Duras (Poverty)

By Cynthia Cruz

"The link with poverty is there is there in the man's hat, too, for money has got to be brought in, got to be brought in somehow," M.D., The Lover.

Poverty is in the language, it is in her gaze back. It seeps and oozes into every poverty-stricken word. Each word is used sparingly as if each word were  currency.

It is everywhere. It stains everything.

It is everywhere. It flies about. It watches from every corner of the page.

Poverty is not something one leaves behind. A child born into poverty will always feel its presence at the edges of everything. Even right now, you can feel it—it is in my words, these tiny fractured things.

Cynthia Cruz, "Duras (Poverty)" from Guidebooks for the Dead. Copyright © 2020 by Cynthia Cruz.  Reprinted by permission of Four Way Books, www.fourwaybooks.com.

Source: Guidebooks for the Dead (Four Way Books, 2020)