Someone's in the Kitchen with Mary

Detroit, 1972.

Downstairs, the old man with three teeth is yelling.
Being upstairs is sometimes no better than being downstairs.
He and his son are arguing again. He don't speak English
too good. By nine, his beer has been guzzled, becoming
an authority of his own. Meaningless words fly back and
forth. Reason is replaced by loudness. His life belongs
to the kitchen table he sits at, night after night.

When he was twenty-two, he must have thought
of more than a kitchen table and white T-shirts.
Didn't his youthful dreams search for much more?
Or did he never sleep, only to lie awake, staring
into the blackness, never dreaming.

- Now showing at ArtWorks the month of November.