Out of the Dust Read Online Free PDF

doesn’t swing lightly
    the way Ma’s voice did,
    the way Miss Freeland’s voice does,
    the way Mad Dog sings.
    My father’s voice starts and stops,
    like a car short of gas,
    like an engine choked with dust,
    but then he clears his throat
    and the song starts up again.
    He rubs his eyes
    the way I do,
    with his palms out.
    Ma never did that.
    And he wipes the milk from his
    upper lip same as me,
    with his thumb and forefinger.
    Ma never did that, either.
    We don’t talk much.
    My father never was a talker.
    Ma’s dying hasn’t changed that.
    I guess he gets the sound out of him with the
    songs he sings.
    I can’t help thinking
    how it is for him,
    without Ma.
    Waking up alone, only
    his shape
    left in the bed,
    outlined by dust.
    He always smelled a little like her
    first thing in the morning,
    when he left her in bed
    and went out to do the milking.
    She’d scuff into the kitchen a few minutes later,
    bleary eyed,
    to start breakfast.
    I don’t think she was ever
    really meant for farm life,
    I think once she had bigger dreams,
    but she made herself over
    to fit my father.
    Now he smells of dust
    and coffee,
    tobacco and cows.
    None of the musky woman smell left that was Ma.
    He stares at me,
    maybe he is looking for Ma.
    He won’t find her.
    I look like him,
    I stand like him,
    I walk across the kitchen floor
    with that long-legged walk
    of his.
    I can’t make myself over the way Ma did.
    And yet, if I could look in the mirror and see her in
    my face.
    If I could somehow know that Ma
    and baby Franklin
    lived on in me …
    But it can’t be.
    I’m my father’s daughter.
    January 1935

The President’s Ball
    All across the land,
    couples dancing,
    arm in arm, hand in hand,
    at the Birthday Ball.
    My father puts on his best overalls,
    I wear my Sunday dress,
    the one with the white collar,
    and we walk to town
    to the Legion Hall
    and join the dance. Our feet flying,
    me and my father,
    on the wooden floor whirling
    to Arley Wanderdale and the Black Mesa Boys.
    Till ten,
    when Arley stands up from the piano,
    to announce we raised thirty-three dollars
    for infantile paralysis,
    a little better than last year.
    And I remember last year,
    when Ma was alive and we were
    crazy excited about the baby coming.
    And I played at this same party for Franklin D.
    Roosevelt
    and Joyce City
    and Arley.
    Tonight, for a little while
    in the bright hall folks were almost free,
    almost free of dust,
    almost free of debt,
    almost free of fields of withered wheat.
    Most of the night I think I smiled.
    And twice my father laughed.
    Imagine.
    January 1935

Lunch
    No one’s going hungry at school today.
    The government
    sent canned meat,
    rice,
    potatoes.
    The bakery
    sent loaves of bread,
    and
    Scotty Moore, George Nall, and Willie Harkins
    brought in milk,
    fresh creamy milk
    straight from their farms.
    Real lunch and then
    stomachs
    full and feeling fine
    for classes
    in the afternoon.
    The little ones drank themselves into white
    mustaches,
    they ate
    and ate,
    until pushing back from their desks,
    their stomachs round,
    they swore they’d never eat again.
    The older girls,
    Elizabeth and LoRaine, helped Miss Freeland
    cook,
    and Hillary and I,
    we served and washed,
    our ears ringing with the sound of satisfied children.
    February 1935

Guests
    In our classroom this morning,
    we came in to find a family no one knew.
    They were shy,
    a little frightened,
    embarrassed.
    A man and his wife, pretty far along with a baby
    coming,
    a baby
    coming
    two little kids
    and a grandma.
    They’d moved into our classroom during the night.
    An iron bed
    and some pasteboard boxes. That’s all they had.
    They’d cleaned the room first, and arranged it,
    making a private place for themselves.
    “I’m on the look for a job,” the man said.
    “The dust blew so mean last night
    I thought to shelter my family here awhile.”
    The two little kids turned their big eyes
    from Miss Freeland
    back to their father.
    “I can’t have my wife