food stamps

This is us going to church
In our black Mercedes Benz Kompressor
The beautiful, elegant C230 Sports Coupe

We're not here to pray
Nor attending the service
We're just here for the food stamps

On the basement of that awful church
We become officially poor
The subject of scorn

This wasn’t supposed to happen
To people like us
Yet we do the paperwork and stand in line

This wasn’t supposed to happen
To white, educated, affluent people like us
Yet here we are, scraping the bottom of the barrel

We get the weird looks
The pitiful gazes
And passive aggresive stares

How come you crawl out of that car
The black, beautiful Mercedes Benz Kompressor C230 Sports Coupe
And dive into this hole, they ask

For the food
It's all about the food
We all need it, don't we?

They tell you to sell the car
They tell you you don't fit in their statistics
They tell you so many things

So we get about our business with whatever dignity we've got left
Feel the scorn from the comfort of the soft beige leather seats
Driving back home

And we hold on to it
Because that Mercedes
Is the one reliable trustworthy thing in our lives

Thank you for your hard-earned wisdom
But we don't need anybody's pity
We're just here for the food stamps


emily thompson (New York, NY, 1990)

average household

now calling all residents
to join the main dining room
for a special evening
and celebration

we are now officialy plummeting
into the depths of financial hell
surely we must have become
an average household

this is what's left
out of our well-off existence:
bankruptcy
and foreclosure

we will feast in unpaid bills
mom will pawn her latest tiffany's
silver acquisitions
and buy frozen burgers at the latino grocery

me, what am i expected to do?
surrender hope
beg for freedom
turn into melting ice


emily thompson (New York, NY, 1990)

dad came home

dad came home
he never does during golf season
so i guess something must be wrong
but he smiles
looks happy as ever
his membership at Augusta
was cancelled without warning, he tells me
and he laughs dryly, asks me if I want
to join him for lunch; something must be
really wrong

mom is abroad
in Switzerland i think
she couldn't get a room at the same spa her girlfriends were staying
but she managed to book something a few miles away
just to be there, couldn't afford not to
she texted me before she left; that's the thing
with these overseas pamper parties
you need to play along
you have to be there

my credit card got rejected
when i ordered my klonopin
is everything okay, dad?
he smiled
looking happy as ever
and only now i can see all of his smiles
are in fact the cracks all over the façade
of this sumptuous life of ours

dad came home
and the whole world seems to be falling apart
but we play along
we have to


emily thompson (New York, NY, 1990)