Thursday short poem: Gary Soto's How Things Work

I'm trying to make sure that I put every poet associated with Cal up at least once this year for a Thursday short poem.

Gary Soto taught at Berkeley as an adjunct in the 1980s, and was wildly popular with many of my friends who were taking Chicano Studies courses. (I took a couple of those classes myself, writing a long paper on Ana Castillo, another poet whose work I need to mine soon). Soto is also a decent poet, and this is one of his more famous ones. I picked it because it had some connection to the impassioned and interesting discussions here last week about hiring housecleaners.

How Things Work

Today it's going to cost us twenty dollars
To live. Five for a softball. Four for a book,
A handful of ones for coffee and two sweet rolls,
Bus fare, rosin for your mother's violin.
We're completing our task. The tip I left
For the waitress filters down
Like rain, wetting the new roots of a child
Perhaps, a belligerent cat that won't let go
Of a balled sock until there's chicken to eat.
As far as I can tell, daughter, it works like this:
You buy bread from a grocery, a bag of apples
From a fruit stand, and what coins
Are passed on helps others buy pencils, glue,
Tickets to a movie in which laughter
Is thrown into their faces.
If we buy goldfish, someone tries on a hat.
If we buy crayons, someone walks home with a broom.
A tip. a small purchase here and there,
And things just keep going. I guess.

The uncertainty in the last two words keeps this from being an ode to micro-capitalism. And you gotta love the imagery of "wetting the new roots of a child." That's good.

Comments

[annika]

Nice. And thanks, Hugo, for spotlighting Cal poets.

[Hugo]

Well, you gave me the idea... quite a few more we can dig up, I think.

[Alyvia]

Hi I'm 12 and I'm doing research on you for school. I can't seem to find your poems anywhere! please send me a poem of yours that I can put on my report. Thanks Bye

Muah Much ~*Alyvia*~

[Amanda]

i don't know what its about and where can i find more of his poems?