Edward Dorn: On the Debt My Mother Owed to Sears Roebuck

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Ordering from Sears Roebuck catalogue because of the distance to the nearest store, Pie Town, New Mexico: photo by Russell Lee, June 1940 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Summer was dry, dry the garden
our beating hearts, on that farm, dry
with the rows of corn the grasshoppers
came happily to strip, in hordes, the first
thing I knew about locust was they came
dry under the foot like the breaking of
a mechanical bare heart which collapses
from an unkind an incessant word whispered
in the house of the major farmer
and the catalogue company,
from no fault of anyone
my father coming home tired
and grinning down the road, turning in
is the tank full? thinking of the horse
and my lazy arms thinking of the water
so far below the well platform.

On the debt my mother owed to sears roebuck
we brooded, she in the house, a little heavy
from too much corn meal, she
a little melancholy from the dust of the fields
in her eye, the only title she ever had to lands --
and man's ways winged their way to her through the mail
saying so much per month
so many months, this is yours, take it
take it, take it, take it
and in the corncrib, like her lives in that house
the mouse nibbled away at the cob's yellow grain
until six o'clock when her sorrow grew less
and my father came home

On the debt my mother owed to sears roebuck?
I have nothing to say, it gave me clothes to
wear to school,
and my mother brooded
in the rooms of the house, the kitchen, waiting
for the men she knew, her husband, her son
from work, from school, from the air of locusts
and dust masking the hedges of field she knew
in her eye as a vague land where she lived,
boundaries, whose tractors chugged pulling harrows
pulling discs, pulling great yields from the earth
pulse for the armies in two hemispheres, 1943
and she was part of that stay at home army to keep
things going, owing that debt.



Edward Dorn (1929-1999): On the Debt My Mother Owed to Sears Roebuck, from Hands Up! (1964)

Trees killed by drought and grasshoppers frame this farm in Grant County, North Dakota: photo by Arthur Rothstein, July 1936 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

 

Trees stripped bare by drought and grasshoppers on farm near Saint Anthony, North Dakota: photo by Arthur Rothstein, July 1936 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

 

 

Stripped bare by drought and grasshoppers. Trees on the farm of Mrs. Emma Knoll, Grant County, North Dakota: photo by Arthur Rothstein, July 1936 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

 

 

Signs along highway approaching Hurst, Williamson County, Illinois: photo by Arthur Rothstein, January 1939 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

 

 

Movie advertisements, Herrin, Illinois: photo by Arthur Rothstein, January 1939 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

 

 

Shoppers, Herrin, Illinois: photo by Arthur Rothstein, January 1939 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

 

Trespasser, Steritz, Illinois: photo by Arthur Rothstein, January 1939 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

 

 Funeral service at undertaker's establishment, West Frankfort, Illinois: photo by Arthur Rothstein, January 1939 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)