Pickers
I’m no longer legal to drive their bombs
The Judas goat state is the enemy of the poor, regardless of skin color
Soon enough, we’ll all be pickers for Amazon
We lived out in the Tules. Fifteen miles down a rutted dirt road. Long past the sewer lines. Out past the telephone lines. Closer to Three Peaks than we were to town. Papa Skinner bought flat land when flat land was cheap. Cheap, flat land with forage and a high enough water table was a good investment. You could always run cattle on it, dig a well, and grow alfalfa. My birth certificate lists my daddy’s profession as “Pipe Fitter.” But his true vocation was PTSD from Vietnam. He wanted to become a commercial artist. That didn’t happen. In late 68, the same year M.L.K. and R.F.K. were slain in plain sight, a counselor at Harbor College miscalculated his class credits and his A1 draft notice followed. The surfer boy they deported was not the broken child soldier they shipped back. My mama’s profession ain’t listed. Neither were her aspirations. At the time, she was a cocktail waitress using breastfeeding as a form of birth control. I am hungry miracle No. 3 and the eldest boy. Three …
