Every Monday night finds four or five poets reading from their poetic works, so it was another fun time at the Upper Crust being a part of the Stroll of Poets.
This is one of the five or six poems I shared:
Someone Forgot They Had Children Tonight
Four years old
and they found her like that
a crumpled heap of grief in the shade
a crown of poverty bruised her head
hunger leaned into her cheeks
and the scrappings of her dress
held together thin bones
locked in fear
Someone forgot they had children tonight
and didn’t come home
didn’t see how she fed herself
on the absence
of mother and father
how her posture curled into a tiny cage of ribs
to protect her heart
or the way her dreams
dried up in her eyes
Four years old
and they found her like that
hunched in anguish
rehearsing her abandonment
in daily ritual
- Barbara Mitchell -