The car is silver, not taxi yellow,
and nothing in nature could ever account
for the green of the driver’s hair.
It’s the color of money, she says. She says
sometimes her life can fold in like a purse,
but she always knows the price she’s paying.
She says her name is Faith, and she thinks
her mother meant it ironically,
but the karma seems to be working okay.
I could have been born a boy, she says,
or married one. Or both. I could
have become some kind of tycoon. Or worse.
I’m happy, she says, the way I am.
I know where I’ve been. I do not begrudge.
I know where I’m going. I am not driven.
George McDermott is a full-time writer and occasional teacher living in Florida with a Renaissance Woman and their remarkably literate Border Terrier. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly. His chapbook—Pictures, Some of Them Moving—won the Moonstone Chapbook Award. He is also co-author of What Went Right, a nonfiction book about the successes and missteps of public education in the United States.