Swirling under three dresses,
wearing a peaked hat like
Dorothy’s witch,
she drags a battered red wagon
across the busy street,
its squeaking right rear wheel wobbling.

Traffic parts for her.
She has a magic–
the magic of lurching motion,
sudden stops,
and a gift for finding wealth
in the garbage cans in the alleys.

She brushes away the flies,
digs within the mustard covered
wax paper, the stained newsprint,
the syrupy coffee cups
in Styrofoam or plastic, and she
pulls wealth from the stink.

With her furtive crow eyes,
she sights a returnable Pepsi bottle–10 cents–
a man’s left shoe in black–
Time magazine, last week’s–
a paperback with no cover–
stuffing all into a brown paper bag.

Trusting no one,
she lives in the basement
of the abandoned hospital,
wears her whole wardrobe,
and swirls through city traffic
in the immunity of dance.

# # #

Born in Pennsylvania, David Anthony Sam has written poetry for over 40 years. He lives now in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda, and in 2017 retired as president of Germanna Community College. Sam has four collections and was the featured poet in the Spring 2016 issue of The Hurricane Review and the Winter 2017 issue of Light: A Journal of Photography and Poetry. His poetry has appeared in over 70 journals and publications. Sam’s chapbook Finite to Fail: Poems after Dickinson was the 2016 Grand Prize winner of GFT Press Chapbook Contest and his collection All Night over Bones received an Honorable Mention for the 2016 Homebound Poetry Prize. In 2017, he began serving as Poetry Editor for GFT. www.davidanthonysam.com

Photo: Vicol Mihaela