BRIDGE CARD HOLDER

Demetrius Buckley

You have insufficient funds at 11:52, again at 11:58. 12:01, you swipe Newports and Arizona Iced Tea, Everfresh Papaya Juice because you don’t like how gin burns when traveling solo down a dry throat. You seem to think of your child and snatch a red Blow Pop which, by morning, will end up stuck on the side of a carseat collecting fast food crumbs and dollar store weave, a ponytail on a stick. At a distance, Chandler Park is a simple circle: one way in one way out. It reminds you of momma’s favorite line: niggas chase their own funky tails. You want him in deep circles, calendar events, when prenatal prescriptions boost your monthly funds with swollen breasts and thick thighs, under a shirt one size too big. Maybe this time it’ll be a girl and she’ll inspire the young boys up the street to catch her dreaming out the hood. You ignore momma when she say he gon’ be in prison or on a T-shirt posing the good lord’s death. She makes you think about that.

You put on a WIC renewal form, under the name of the girl’s father, incarcerated. Or deceased. The looks would be indefinite as you sit opposite the social worker. CPS on speed dial like Chinese One takeout, the place with the orange chicken soaked in sweet and sour sauce. Your social worker is curvy, her blue hair curled and she always excuses herself when the office phone rings. She got a baby too, you’ve noticed: his picture framed on her desk says her food stamps come every first of the month. You don’t know what box to check: deceased. Incarcerated. Extinct. The night is in heat, the cars in front slow to show off. You know not to love him and all his power, his strap under the seat. You bet his momma was on welfare too, surviving the world made for man. Maybe the feeling will fade like the barcode on the back of a bridge card. Maybe he’ll survive the summer.