Poems by Aaliyah El-Amin

Hungry to Work

When you enter the job market your
salary is on par.
Your co-workers all scowl and stare in disbelief.

You move out of your parents’ home and into your own.
Sunday’s you start ordering KFC and watching football.
Soon the bills start coming in,
and you find yourself ordering from the
McDonald’s $1 section.

Your steady paycheck is deposited on the
1st and 15th,
but you must have a hole in your jean’s pocket.

A few years go by,
and your grocery cart is piled high with TV dinners,
but you have just gotten rid of cable.

Now a decade has passed,
you are now shopping at the discount grocery store,
placing can meats in your cart
trying hard not to gag.

​Still working and driving your 12.6-year-old car,
currently parked behind the church,
in line waiting for a bag of food for the week,
so you can focus on more than
the growl in your stomach.

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​Walking ahead, I don’t see

Walking ahead, there are others, a blur of constant perpetual motion.
Each walking pass oblivious to the misery an alley hides, on the sunniest of days.

There, between good-times Reggie’s & Sal’s overflowing garbage bins line both sides, almost blocking the view, yet darkness calls out, nudging me to pause and look through.

Shriek loudly, as a skeleton of a man appears.
My gaze gravitates toward his grimy hands, dirt wedged between his wrinkles, and heavy clothes swallowing him in sorrow. He peers back, eyes tinged with yellow.

Frozen still between fear, curiosity, and pity--
A blend of emotions without a name, but I ask him, “What’s your name?”
The answer: “Euwan.”

We lock eyes, and I say, “Nice to meet you,”
but do not extend a hand, and he knows it. He sheepishly stares down at my Cole Haans,
we both linger as we know the next words
that will arrive.
Euwan on cue, asked, “You have a dollar to spare?”

I reach into my tan Ralph Lauren coat and hand him a twenty; he quickly grabs it. An impulse grips me to snatch it back, to run to the other side of the street, and take the elevator to the top
floor.
But I don’t, and I do not walk away but stay.

He begins grumbling to himself, preparing his assorted things in a kind of burlap bag. Steps into the light as if for the first time, sleep oozing from his eyes, and discharge lodged in their corners.
His hands shake as he fumbles to steady his bag.

He tips his hat, but I follow two-steps behind him
he knows that I am following, but he doesn’t look back, figuring I’ll trail off.
Something drives me to see where he’s headed,
Will it be as I figure, the closest liquor store?

A ghost among souls with holes, he roams.
Patting his pockets for a flask long emptied. Pacing wildly, waving to drifting whispers.
Abruptly halts and turns entering a Rite Aid.

I go to the other side and grab a newspaper, peer at the items he places on the counter:
Diapers, a soft toy, and formula.
I had imagined his age--

He looked very old, not a father, but a grandfather.
Now, more than ever, I attach myself to his shadows. He crosses the street, and waves to Sal,
returns back down the alley and huddles on the ground--
Where a young woman cradles a bundle.

I lean closer expecting to hear a baby’s cry, but what I find is even more baffling. It’s a duct-
taped clump of newspaper wrapped in a pink frayed blanket.
She fills the bottle with the formula, and proceeds to hum a beautiful lullaby.

I had to know why he would be so frivolous,
“Euwan, what’s going on? I gave you that money, so you could buy food.”
Euwan answers, “That’s Rebecca and a monster caused her to lose her baby.
That bundle is her light and joy, and I would do anything to extend that for her, so I play along.”

Euwan scratches at the grime on his sleeve, and frustratedly scoffs,
“Oh, what would you know? Some things you won’t understand—because you’ve never had to."

“Worked for 29 years, mortgaged 2 homes,
started losing my mind on some bad drugs;
wife took the dog out the back door,
once the law finally came in to evict me.
Lost the house... then the truck."

Suddenly, the air reeked with the stench of wealth, reservations, and valet. The guilt is
suffocating, and the urge to make things right is overpowering.

Over time, Cole Haans became loafers, and then to a pair of Converse, walking into the
nonprofit office site, providing care for all homeless within a 100-mile radius from the alley
where it all began.

On the office wall hangs the lifelong mantra,
"The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members."
~ Mahatma Gandhi

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Aaliyah El-Amin is a poet based in Prince George’s, Maryland. She is the founder of the You Are Write Here collective, and her works showcase unique imagery and resilience, and are featured in both the Maryland Bards and Neopoets anthologies, Artists from Maryland, winner of funniest poem in The Rhyme On contest.
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