Corn Dust

Down the dark country roads with dad
to steal gas from the “rich” landowner
back when gas was

twenty something cents a gallon,
we must have been dirt poor
and indeed we were,

mother making us boys our underwear
from the cloth of flour sacks,
one day we’d eat boiled beans,

the next day boiled beans leftovers,
tortillas hard in the basket,
dad a burnt brown from working

in the fields all day,
corn, cotton, sorghum,
the corn dust blowing

in through the farmhouse windows
I can still feel the sting
right here in my soul.