An Assignment in the Western Sahara, Summer 1964
By Clare Baldwin
He stares at the small wooden bracelet
whose small beads turn
around my equally small wrist,
the two ends tied in an elaborate knot
with a few cotton threads.
He imagines dusky savannas
and distended clouds,
although it was mostly mud huts,
I tell him,
and children with distended stomachs.
He asks what he can give me for it?
the hand-drilled beads are exquisite,
he says, and holds out several bills
which is ridiculous, because
it is only a wooden bracelet.
Two months of digging a well in the Sahara —
which ultimately ran dry, like I knew it would —
doesn't come with the sale;
only a few small beads
whose life expectancy triples that of their maker
hopefully pissing into the dusty rows of corn
and cradling his bulbous stomach.
Honorable Mention, Grades 10-12 Poetry
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