DEAD END

by Michelle Marie

Photo by Bob Chwedyk | Staff Photographer | The Daily Herald

"Anyone is too good to be a waitress," she told him,
after he asked if she thought her new job was beneath
her. "At 30, I never saw myself making minimum wage

working multiple pink collar jobs." The thought made
her cringe. It was a slap in the face. An affront to her
dignity, her values, everything she stood for. Like her,

I didn't believe in wage slavery. If it kept up with some
combination of inflation, worker productivity and executive
pay raise, minimum wage would be $20 an hour today.

It's not the work, it's the pay that's the problem, we agreed.
She is in a perpetual state of amnesia, trying to forget the
hard facts of her life while maintaining a small degree of

hope. Which is easily dashed when male customers call
her honey or proposition her, like when the amateur
photographer offered to take "professional" photos of her.

He got a strange pleasure from watching her fill orders
and waterglasses and empty the bus bin because there
was no busboy, only her. Like an intrepid reporter in

search of a sad story he asked her nagging questions that
haunted her, that he wrongly assumed would help her see
his depth. But there was no depth to a man who dined with

his camera, toting it around like some big statement. She
knew she was nothing but a walking plot device in this
man's pathetic universe, a keeper of his manhood, a

mirror that doubled his virility. She hated him. And hated
me too. As a patron, I could never be fully on her side
even though I threw a fist up and railed against the system,

even though we exchanged world-weary, knowing glances
as she went about the room fulfilling the obligations of
her dead-end trade, smiling and tolerating stupid questions,

like if she was too good for her job.


Michelle Marie has written for Infita7 and Bluestockings Magazine and is currently a Stop Street Harassment blog correspondent.

RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE

by Skaidrite Stelzer

Image source: Windsor Star

The old man smokes on the bus bench

at the Cherry Street Mission in Toledo, Ohio,

hunched over in permanent posture

while the radio blares out against him--

hate speech still allowed against anyone

who can’t make a living. 

The minimum wage shrunken over the years.

“See a coin and pick it up.” 

And the smacking of lips by observers

because he must drink.

Begging is outlawed now in most places,

though I see it discreetly hidden behind signs.

“Will work for food.”

I give her a dollar.

In the East Village, years ago,

a homeless man slept each night in the back

of our pick-up truck.

Others ran to clean our windshields

with dirty rags.

Vying for coins, jostling against each other:

the ballet of poverty.

“All that day you’ll have good luck.”

The majority rules,

making the rich even richer,

giving them more and more

as we hide the poor.

There are still neglected alleys.

Some freeze each winter but we don’t

see their names in the newspapers.

“See a coin and let it lay.”

A minimal wage for a minimal day

cannot buy a home or a room.

I see him scrounging the gutters for cigarette butts,

and when I look at him he gestures and yells.

“Out of his mind,” I have told myself.

Yet he earns his morning coffee.

He cleans the sidewalk of the Sufficient Grounds

coffee shop on Central Street.

No job, no money, but here’s his warm reward.

“What are you looking at?”

or a greeting; it varies.

Then he freezes one winter

like the rest.

Because he was somebody’s son,

there is a small obituary in The Blade.

“You’ll have bad luck all that day.”

The radio blares its message.

The rich need more money.

They must have more money.

One day they are bound to share.

“See a coin and pick it up.”

The frozen sidewalk has no eyes.

Skaidrite Stelzer is a poet and teacher living in Toledo Ohio.  A post-WWII refugee, she grew up in Michigan as a displaced person. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including the Georgetown Review, Eclipse, The Fourth River and The Baltimore Review. She teaches a variety of writing and literature courses at The University of Toledo.