Quarters
at the elementary school for 25 cents a week
in 1959 they’d bring you a carton of milk every day at 2pm.
a mid-afternoon pick me up for twenty 2nd graders who sat dutifully at their
wooden desks between math and geography, taking the slow steps
to growing up. for a quarter a week every
afternoon gary, who died of aids fourteen years later wheeled a cart between five rows
and delivered the milk while scott, who became a carpenter because he
understood angles and how to measure things; marked off the
names in pencil with a crooked check mark and minded the names with
an X beside them who didn’t get milk because they hadn’t paid a quarter.
I kept my head down, pretending not to care. I cared, of course I cared.
but I had never paid, I never had a quarter. I was seven years old,
too young to have a quarter of my own.
And I didn’t want to ask. I knew no way to bring it up
to my father who sat worn thin as explanations every evening
smelling of black dirt and sweat.
with the eyes of a poor men, scooping frijoles from
cracked plates. there was never a sliver of opportunity for questions.
no room between bites for asking. I didn’t want to see
his face and how the sun would sink a little lower behind him
when he dug into his pockets and found them empty.
Gilbert Arzola
Winner of the 2019 Passager Poetry Contest and the 2021 Rattle Poetry Chapbook Contest, Gilbert Arzola has been nominated twice for Pushcart Awards. His book of poetry Prayers of Little Consequence was published in 2019 by Passager, and a chapbook, The Death of a Migrant Worker, was published in 2021 by Rattle. His work has appeared in Crosslimb, The Elysian Review, The Notre Dame Review, Palabra, The Tipton Review, Craft, Acentos Review, Two Cardinals, Flying Island, and Rattle, among others.
