Today’s Poem

Head Above Water Blues

Last year I earned fifty dollars
too much for earned income credit. 
Three fourths of day’s work put me 
over the poverty line, so says the taxman. 
This isn’t what getting over supposed 
to look like. Two grand would’ve 
came back to me if I just slept 
in when they called a substitute teacher. 
Those kids chasing Monarchs to the milk-
weed, counting the days of molting, 
crossing off each lifecycle—this easily worth 
almost any day in my life. That day didn’t
fill up my egg crate with yokes, or pay 
off the poor man’s thirst for the spirits,
the ones, and the zeros that wet bankers lips.

-Jason Braun