Choice

Beauty’s a woman
with a triple nose-piercing
in a battered Chevy pick-up.

Outside Family Dollar
she waits while her 18-year-old boyfriend
runs in to buy her a pack of Salem Lights.

He comes back out 13 cents short.
She digs in her purse and finds a quarter with
green gum stuck on it,

then feeds organic mango sauce
to the baby that she couldn’t bear
to abort.