Saturday, April 14, 2012

Answers to any name, responds to love

This is the poem that inspired the poet, Gary Soto, the Mexican poet, to write poetry.." It expressed "exactly how I felt at the time, unwanted," Soto said. Soto's poems are about Mexican-American factory workers, his father was one of them.

Unwanted
by Edward Field

The poster with my picture on it
Is hanging on the bulletin board in the Post Office.
I stand by it hoping to be recognized
Posing first full face and then profile
But everbody passes by and I have to admit
The photograph was taken some years ago.

I was unwanted then and I'm unwanted now
Ah guess ah'll go up echo mountain and crash.
I wish someone would find my fingerprints somewhere
Maybe on a corpse and say, You're it.

Description: Male, reasonably so
White, but not lily-white and usually deep-red
Thirty-fivish, and looks it lately
Five-feet-nine and one-hundred-thirty pounds: no physique
Black hair going gray, hairline receding fast
What used to be curly, now fuzzy
Brown eyes starey under beetling brow
Mole on chin, probably will become a wen

It is perfectly obvious that he was not popular at school
No good at baseball, and wet his bed.
His aliases tell his story: Dumbell, Good-for-nothing,
Jewboy, Fieldinsky, Skinny, Fierce Face, Greaseball, Sissy.

Warning: This man is not dangerous, answers to any name
Responds to love, don't call him or he will come.

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