R.A. Allen
Muzak for Indigents
at the bus stop
at the health center
at the payday loans
Poverty is their angel
and Want is her song,
a low white thrum
of persistent complaint,
a birth fever
that never abates.
at other times Poverty
is a mezzo-soprano
in a coloratura
of converging sirens
—police, fire, ambulance—
spiccato
on the nerves,
a turbine driving
the adrenaline gland.
R. A. Allen's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the New York Quarterly, Night Train, The William & Mary Review, RHINO, Gargoyle, Euphony, and elsewhere. He has one Pushcart nomination. He lives in Memphis for the humidity. More at
thistles stretch their prickly arms afar