Just a Penny

by Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt

You know that trouble what ironed me
last year? I went to that place you told me--
there’s this red carpet like I’m some kinda King
o’ somethin'. There’s some posh chair 
in the waitin' room, clay pot o' red flowers, 
silk, I think, smellin' up the space
with that fakeness. I see the man, that lawyer,
he says to me real serious like,
“How much justice can you afford?”

I can’t afford nothin'.
I got somethin' like a penny
slid under the railroad, all flattened
out by that train gone south, that nasty screech
runnin' the poor thing over, that little money
pitched off the track to the woods,
chippin' off the grass,
driven into dirt,
sinkin' rotten copper back to Earth.

That’s you ‘n me.