I want to be Joe Manchin’s momma,
to set myself down at the kitchen table
with a cup of tea and wait until he stumbles

home in the wee hours. My quiet will scare
him so; my mild will make him cringe.
“Is that you, Joe?” I’ll say. “Is that my Joe?

Who came out my body? The boy I raised?
You better set down right now, son,
I hardly recognize you. Look

at all this money here on the table,
son. I found this in your pants pockets,
doing laundry. That’s a lot of money, Joe.

Where’d. You. Get. It. Is this why I fed your
poor departed hard-working daddy beans
instead of meat, when we was saving

to send you to college? All that sacrifice.
Every night. You think about it, good, now.
So you could go and become a common thief?

And who you been out with so late? Shuffling
in to your momma’s house at this hour! No,
don’t you interrupt me. I don’t need an

answer. It was a rhetorical question. You think
I don’t know that big word? You going to tell me
you were praying with Jesus in the garden?

You a liar now, too? And aren’t you ashamed
of this climate deal. You so big, now, Mr. Senator
Joe Manchin, that you don’t have live in this world,

with the birds, and the trees, and the creatures?
This beautiful world that God made for us and gave us
to care for, and is suffering and dying because of the heat,

and needs us to take care of it and figure it out
and you just jerking good people around
and you can’t do your job?

You take this paper, here, and this little pencil.
I sharpened it good while I waited for you.
You set right here and you write an apology

to the people of this world and to God who loves you
and to your momma who loves you despite it all.
And you get up tomorrow and you go straight back

to Washington and you make it right. I’ll set the alarm
for six o’clock. I already packed your lunch.
I’ll make you some eggs for breakfast.”

Teresa Scollon is a poet, essayist, and educator. Her third collection, Trees and Other Creatures, is out from Alice Greene & Co (2022). She is also the author of To Embroider the Ground with Prayer, an Indie finalist, from Wayne State University Press; and a chapbook from Michigan Writers Cooperative Press. Scollon is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow, and alumna and former writer-in-residence at Interlochen Arts Academy. She won the 2018 Moveen Poetry Prize. She teaches the North Ed Writers Studio at Career Tech in Traverse City and is co-editor of the literary journal Dunes Review. 

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