Eddie’s Jr. Market Liquor messed up; 

they bought an arcade game, just one.

Manoys saw it as a problem to solve: 

playing without paying.

They spent afternoons hammering coins 

and washers, adjusting width and thickness, 

testing their work by slipping homemade change 

into the slot, seeing which were spit back 

and which were kept, tying change to fishing line, 

and changing knots. They learned nickels worked best, 

flatter with string, thicker without, but always flash 

a real quarter when you start or the clerk will ban you 

forever. Buy one loose fun-sized candy before you leave 

to play four times tomorrow. They got so good at it,

White Mom and Brown Dad thought them, us, geniuses 

or video game gods, hours of entertainment on a quarter,

four total, one for each of us. When they changed the game,

the slugs stopped working, and we had to find techniques

to get more quarters from Brown Dad. Nothing worked.

Machines are easier to fool than people,

especially when those quarters are earned 

by sleeping during the day, working all night

Surrounded by a cacophony of machinery and meat 

from the dog food factory’s boiler room.

When quarters cost you the ability to hear, 

you can give no more than four, 

even to gods and geniuses, 

before you stop hearing requests.