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Joey Merchant

I am an artist/social worker living and working in Detroit, MI.  As a social worker I am employed at a nonprofit human service agency serving homeless, mentally ill and developmentally disabled individuals.  I facilitate art therapy workshops at a homless shelter, and sincerely believe that through artistic expression, people can heal. As an artist, I express myself through mosaics, photography, soft sculputure, poetry and prose.

JB

She is blind in one eye
From an STD of her mother
She has only molars in her mouth
And full facial hair
We are both 34
She manipulates to survive
She writes poems too
She spells “conscious” “conches”
She hurts all of the time
She never feels safe
She rejected my help endlessly
Probably because she didn’t know
How to take the help gracefully
She used up countless blocks of my time
Which yielded no results that I could see
It made me feel helpless
Just like she feels all of the time
I have 70 other families to tend to
I had to say goodbye
She carries a fold up white metal cane
With a chipped red tip
And a big metal ball of a handle
As she was escorted out of my life
She gave me a surprise parting gift
Hurled the cane at my face
My pain to match her pain
My neat and tidy life
Unraveling before her eyes
My tears to match her tears
Her face said that she wanted to see
If I would hurt like her
A blow for a blow
As I drove off
In a white Cadillac
She was up against a concrete wall
Police all around her
Her gaze held my gaze
Until traffic cleared and I drove away
To a place that is safe
Me in a blue hospital gown
Like the gown she will wear
When she gets to the crisis center
She will be strapped down
Injected with sedatives
And released back on the street
In a day or two
She will continue to be homeless
Mentally ill and off her meds
Developmentally disabled
Spending her monthly check in a day
On crack for her and her friends
I know the next chapter by heart
She will be exploited, raped,
Assaulted, humiliated and rejected
Again, over and over
Our tie is broken now
I will get assigned a new case
To take her place
And she will exhaust another worker
Someone told me that now and then
You run into a person 
With no redeeming qualities
Who is absolutely unlovable
There are reasons why
Everyone else rejects her
And I shouldn’t feel bad for giving up
But I do and probably always will