Drip Poem

Mr. Angry, Stupid, and White
I woke feeling like shit
And smelling shit
In my overseas teacher ghetto
Oversugared
From the glucose
Of chocolate-covered truffles
I consumed the night before
I had bought from Walmart
Insomnia
Trying to sweet myself to sleep
The room is disorder
Chaos
Nothing unpacked from travels
The room molested by papers
Strewn everywhere unarranged
Like confetti gone mad
I'm waiting for
Four Bangladeshi workers
To fix my eternally dripping sink
Mildewing my sleep
Since August
I've been having to go under the sink to turn the
Faucet hard from the knob
And it's dry and hot and old wormwood
Kind of place cockroaches love
But still haven't seen one there
They prefer the bathroom tiles
I open the door to the workers
In blue jumpsuits
And I barked like an overprivileged mad dog
About the time I waited for the
Faucet to be repaired
And a must have looked like
White satin
Grouchy and pissed
They came into my nightmare apartment
And put in a real good faucet
The drip stopped
And I beamed at the promise of quiet sleep
And shook the workers' hands
One by one
And said "sorry for being an ass"
Their handshakes were limp
Most of them haven't seen their family
In two years or more
And were paid one tenth of my pay
And had to crowd together
In a chilly pneumonic flat
And here's me
Bloated and overpaid
My thoughts whizzing around
Nothing at the moment
More traumatic
Than
A drippy sink
My handshake would have been limp too