Poems After Dorothea Lange, by Margo Davis

Untitled (Oklahoma Refugees), photography by Dorothea Lange (USA) 1935

​Potato Clouds             
           
When Ma picks up this hitchhiker,
I mumble, not this one.
His horns must pop out at night. 
 
The government had paid Pa to put
our oxen down. Pa muttered,  
one less mouth to feed. I miss Ivan.
 
Paprika coats the stranger’s beefy
neck. The front seat sinks,
a fallen cake, he grunting then 
 
expectant, like Ma’s about to serve 
roast and potatoes. Then he spots
me slumped in the back like a flour
 
sack. He frowns, shifting a bit.
His mushroom cap glides
over his beet red face. He tells Ma
 
where to turn. Ain’t picking up
supplies. Would the government
pay to put this one down? 

Woman of the High Plains (Nettie Featherston), Texas Panhandle, by Dorothea Lange (USA) 1938

​Day Night Day                                                                       
 
Ma whispers, drive, Sissy. 
She thinks we have gas.
Sunlight makes me so thirsty
my tongue dangles.
But every drop is dusty so
instead I nibble a bruised heel
of bread. Is that maize? 
Ma coughs day, night,
into dawn. Today hangs,
a dirty bed sheet flapping
on a makeshift line.
If only I could tie
a wet kerchief over my nose.
Mid-afternoon skies darken,
churn. I gaze in space.
Not night sky, exactly,
slick like a blackboard. No,
chalky like clapped erasers.
Do stars swoon? Fine
particles land on my shoulders.
I brace my legs over Ma’s
so she can’t sleepwalk.
Do I smell fry dough? Can’t
see my palms, not even if
cupped like the Big Dipper.

Family on the Road, Oklahoma, by Dorothea Lange (USA) 1938

​Nothing Now, Nothing Later
     
No wheat to tussle in the wind tossing dust
             then dying down.
No wind competing with our oxen’s bellow 
             now that Ivan’s
 
been put down. No birds singing. There
             are no birds.
 
No stealthy jackrabbit slipping through
             the grasslands.
 
Both rabbit and grass, gone. Not a raindrop
             to defy stinging
 
light. No baby’s breath. Nothing but dust.
            The car? Sold it.

Destitute Pea Pickers, by Dorothea Lange (USA) 1936

​Hollowing                                                                                           
                                                                                               
Hunger makes me
chew string of all things
 
but not for taste
or texture. This hunger,
born of nervousness,
 
as squalls hunger for upset,
stirring chaos dread near-madness--
 
its hunger stripping maize
from the fields. I hunger for
a full dinner plate. For
 
hunger-free. So weak I can’t
scoop up a dead jack. Instead I wrest
 
the baby’s teething bone.
Hunger drowns out each rumbling
squall. Angry skies roil.
 
Hungry vagrants expect
handouts. Here’s nothing
 
halved. My face covered
with a wet sheet, I suck its hem,
wheeze. Hunger
 
overpowers us, needles the bony
children. Hunger, ease up

Ditched, Stalled and Stranded, San Joajuin Valley, California, by Dorothea Lange (USA) 1936

​Black Sunday                           
             
Imagine fifteen long minutes of darkness, dust
scrubbing skin, eyes, nostrils. Such fine red dust
 
inside a flour sack dress coated with more dust.
And that churning wind! carrying soft dust
 
that half-buried the stalled car. Buried us! More dust
coated the ships three hundred miles out. Dust
 
choked the fields. Pea pickers migrated West when dust
pneumonia spread through the squatters’ camps. Dust
 
settled on tumbleweeds and Ma’s face and then dust
took our little brother too. Gritty dust
 
rolled in, maybe eight foot high. Why? A choking dust.
Still no water anywhere. No crops. Dust
 
hunted us down. Our skin, cracked as the earth. This dust
wiped out the Davis clan. Indifferent dust.

Margo Davis

Margo Davis was born with traveling shoes. She's been awarded ten writing residencies, mostly overseas, including recent ones in southern Portugal and Budapest, as well as Italy and two outside Barcelona. A three-time Pushcart nominee, her poems have or will appear in The Ekphrastic Review, Equinox Biannual Journal, three Lamar Press anthologies and Verse Daily. Her chapbook Quicksilver is available on Amazon. Originally from Louisiana, Margo lives in Houston.