Dorothea Lange: Migrant Mother (1936).

Dorothea Lange: Migrant Mother (1936)

   After the peas freeze on the vine,
   they feed on wild birds.
   Then they feed on dust.

   Hunger grows fat
   on their flesh.
   It climbs up their sleep
   into their eyes.

   She sits in the roadside tent
   a lookout
   still as bark.
   Her ears are caves
   rattling with ice and wind.

   She sells the truck tires
   for food.
   There is no reprieve
   nowhere to go.

   The children wrap
   around her like a shawl
   too big to crawl back in.