After Our Three Year Old Learns the Realtor
Won’t Rent to Families with Children
I buy her a donut,
the last glaze twist in the shop
at two in the afternoon.
We sit in the window and watch
the traffic on Main Street.
I drink coffee. She sips
chocolate milk through a straw.
All these cars are going somewhere,
I say, and that’s where
we are going. Somewhere.
Soon, your mother will be
home from work, and I
will leave for my job
at the gas station. You can
tell your mother about
the realtor’s perfect black dress
and the two bedroom house
we left behind. Tell her,
we’re going to buy a dog
who will run to you
whenever you call her name.
Al Ortolani, a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize, is a contributing editor to the Chiron Review. His poems have appeared in Rattle, One Art, and the Pithead Chapel. His most recent collection of poetry is Controlled Burn, published by Spartan Press. His first young adult novel Bull in the Ring has been recently released by Meadowlark Books.
