Nina Prater

Once when he and his brother were kids 
Granny sent them into the pasture 
to dig thistles and pour salt
into the holes to kill the roots 
for a whole hot Arkansas summer day. 
When they finished 
she paid them each a quarter. 
My husband isn’t that old, 
a quarter wasn’t any money 
in the 1980s even to a kid. 
Couldn’t even buy a candy bar with that. 
He hated the pay worse than the job.
Just don’t even bother if it’s that little.
Don’t make yourself feel like the scores are even.
Wheelbarrows full of the hateful plant, 
blistered hands, chiggers, sunburn.
Twenty-five cents. Jesus. 
Even now, no matter what I say 
about goldfinches, he sees sweat 
and spines and insult when the purple petals
push their way out of the thorny buds.

Nina Prater is the author of Under the Canopy of Unpruned Leaves, a poetry chapbook published by Belle Point Press. Her poems have also been published by One Sentence Poems, Buddhist Poetry Review, Literary Mama, and A Revolutionary Press. Nina and her family live on a farm in Northwest Arkansas.