the better part of the afternoon reading stories
of local kidnappings and bank robberies,
nor the president's plans for another far-off war;
no one bothered with the crossword puzzle
or asking where all our fathers had gone, or why.
What mattered most was clipping coupons
for all household things imaginable -- fifty cents off
laundry detergent, fifteen cents off toilet paper,
dyed pink or blue, or buy-one-get-one-free
for the generic brand puffed rice cereal.
We mixed our milk from powder, a gray-blue
substance which reminded me of bone,
and of chalk-dust at the end of the school day.
Those coupons, that secret language of
nickels and dimes, transcribed on paper so fine
that you could rub it all but away between your fingers,
inevitably found their way into
our mothers' oversized purses, clipped
neatly together, pulled out and pondered, traded
the way we boys traded baseball cards.
Which is to say that we managed somehow,
all of us; we entered each far-fetched sweepstakes,
and all of those wars, we paid for those too.
