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Dummy Goode

Grave Poems of Spoon Island: Dummy Good

my real name was Clarence
but they always called me Dummy
because they thought I was stupid
I lived with my Mom and swept up at Prewett’s store
for a dollar a day ‘cause
I wasn’t smart enough to do nothin’ else    
every Saturday the local men
would sit and smoke and tell jokes
around Mr. Prewett’s pot-bellied stove
then one of them would wink
and lay a nickel and a dime on the pickle barrel
and tell me I could have whichever one I wanted
for myself        and I would take my time
and rub my chin like I was thinkin’
heavy on it and pick the nickel  and say
“this one -  it’s the biggest”
and they’d all  laugh and slap their knees
they never tired of it
one day Mr. Prewett asked me
“why do you let them make a fool of you
like that?  you know that a dime’s
worth more than a nickel”   and I come up
close to his ear so no one else’d hear
and said, “cause if I took the dime
they wouldn’t do it no more”
 
and they called ME ‘Dummy’!

Inspired by the book "Spoon River Anthology" by Edgar Lee Masters. These poems have been crafted by me under the title "Grave Poems of Spoon Island".

#1990Something

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