You want to be a poet?! My father’s calloused heart scoffed at the idea: why not write a movie? And, I mean, writing is a nice hobby—my mother’s carpal tunnel, ravaged back and hips assured me—but you need a real job! Her skin is blotched with worry, sixty-two and still serving food, cutting hair for tens of dollars. She’s a wage slave in the country that dumped her husband, my father, into a distant jungle, had him kill Vietnamese farmers for freedom, an expensive commodity when traded on the human market. And now she has this son, an unemployed professor, an almost PhD who thinks he’s a poet, a writer, depressed and anxious, on the computer every day instead of getting a real job, steady work, like his father—a carpenter, or maybe you could be an electrician. You’re so good with your hands. I’m really not, mom. I’m clumsy. Oh, stop it, Charlie! Be an electrician. They make good money.
