The Bag Lady
1 Minute Read Time
Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: I love the empathy and generosity of spirit that the speaker of this poem feels about the woman of the title. Though we sometimes use shorthand/stereotype to quickly describe a person, this speaker resists that, turning a pejorative term into its literal components and thus humanizing the woman.
Listen to Rathburn read the poem:
The Bag Lady
My father told me about the bag lady
every time we saw someone shouldering
a shopping cart loaded with garbage bags.
She was an old woman—a relative—
his family would visit in whatever rooming house
she’d consented to stay in for a time.
He said that she never unpacked, keeping
everything she owned by the door. How many
bags, I wondered, would my life fit inside?
We owned so little then, but I knew I’d want
to keep it all. I imagined her bags lined up
against the wall like pairs of shoes, as if shelter
were something one could slip on and off.
