Won’t You Please Help
Tiffany the Tiny Pom-Pom Girl
And Little Kevin the Quarterback
With Their Expensive Operations
From snapshots taped to a collection jar
they smile. We leave our quarters' worth of hope
where we buy beer and smokes and gas the car.
On the way to our local friendly bar
their eyes, guileless and devouring, grope
at us from the altar of their Mason jar.
Sunday we barbequed, almost broke par.
Monday—there they are—those desperate folk
who crave our loose change when we gas the car—
Quick trip or Get ‘n Go—can’t let small things mar
our laughs, our profits our plans—make us choke
on the guilt that seeps from a half-full jar.
Salesperson, plumber, trucker, software star—
no time for sorrow in a dusty jar.
Mark DeFoe is Professor Emeritus of English at West Virginia Wesleyan College where he teaches in Wesleyan’s low-residency MFA Writing Program. His poems have been published in Kenyon Review, Paris Review, and Poetry, among others.
