POEM: ‘Ghazal: The Minimum Wage, 2014’
Having dinner before the president’s state of the union address
My beloved produces a rant on the topic of raising the minimum wage
He fumes as he has fumed on more than one occasion
it would be fucking good for the economy, raising the minimum wage
only he does not use this language. We are microwaving the wild rice.
What would reduce income disparity, aid consumption? a higher wage.
We are finishing the Thai spicy beef dish our granddaughter made
when she stayed over with us last weekend, cooking for no wage
but our love. We are eating spinach cooked with onions, coriander,
cardamom and butter. We agree that raising the minimum wage
has been shown by studies to have no effect whatever on unemployment.
We fiercely interrupt each other to announce this, which is the wage
of marriage. Would congress approve a bill requiring companies like Walmart
and Target that employ more than x thousand people at minimum wage
to keep x percent as fulltime employees getting health benefits
along with their minimum starvation wage?
Not a chance, says my husband, not this broken congress, we pour another
glass of Argentinian Malbec, we drop the topic of the minimum wage,
I have a cookie with walnuts in it, the kind my granddaughter adores.
Soon we will see what the president says about the minimum wage.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
