A fair hearing is a way for individuals to challenge decisions made by the city of New York about public assistance, food stamps, Medicaid, and emergency shelter. Every day, the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA) conducts hundreds of fair hearings at 14 Boerum Place in downtown Brooklyn and 330 34th Street in midtown Manhattan.
I went to a Fair Hearing today, Millicent told me on our daily walk around the dog park. We go there every day to count the turds. Turds, we find, are a better measure of our town's economic health than the foreclosure signs tastelessly littering the lawns along our streets. People will feed their dogs even if they can't pay their mortgages is our belief. And the turds are dropping — 17% fewer than this time last year. We know the town's populace is in trouble, especially the misfortunates among us who have the stupidity to be sick. The government tries to help them in spite of themselves, of course. It's a well-known fact that ours is a compassionate conservancy. I love Fair Hearings for their ironies, Millicent said. I love Fair Hearings for their ability to end sick lives sooner rather than later by forcing the fragile elderly out of their lazy sickbeds and onto the sidewalks. Fair enough, don't you think, to kill them with kindness rather than allow them to linger in pain, a burden on our society which pays for their inadequate care? Funerals are cheaper by far than Remicade. Why, you could bury ten indigents any day of the week for less than what a month's supply of Remicade would cost. I say, Why wait for them to die? It only delays the inevitable. I have written to my member of congress about the wasteful nature of Fair Hearings. He seems quite receptive to my suggestions. I say, give them a Fair Hearing to prove they didn't get the form we didn't send them or accept our settlement offer of cyanide and a recyclable shroud.
My neighbor, Calamity Jane, was waiting for me at the white picket fence
that divides our yards when I came outside to hang my clothes up on the line,
to shrink my carbon footprint in the rain. CC hailed me between thunderclaps,
her hands clenched around the slats, knuckles white with upset. I know the signs.
"I'm taking down my flag," she said, gesturing with her head
toward the drooping rag atop a pole. Her pole is higher, but my flag is newer.
"About time," I said, "that you rid yourself of that disgrace. That flag does no honor
to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan." "You forget," she said, "that I
am indigent. That should count for something, don't you think?"
I was now supposed to apologize for being the last person on the block
who was still well enough to be off Medicaid, for being able to afford
my lovely flag to honor the troops and our constitution, too, of course.
But, time was short and I was getting wet, so I said nothing, which was just
as well, because Cal was now well-launched into her speech. "This morning,"
she said, "I killed a spider of the kind that bites. Over breakfast
I killed a black ant on the kitchen counter. A yellow onion was my weapon.
It is a sin to fail to honor all of God's living creatures, and I have been brought
to account for my sins at another Fair Hearing — by telephone and with no warning.
It was an ambush I deserve for killing bugs without a license or giving notice to the ants."
"How strange," I said. "I thought the Fair Hearing was about your Medicaid.
And there are rules about such things which no fair Fair Hearing judge would dare
to violate." "I know," Cal moaned, unwrapping her fingers from the fence,
pulling holey work-gloves on her hands, and picking up a roll of pricker wire.
As she continued our conversation, she began nailing rolls of wire to the top
of our communal fence. "And no Notice of Fair Hearing has come to me
even though she says it has and that I received it three weeks ago. She sees all
that passes from my mailbox to my house, she says, and when I answer 'How?'
she screams 'Shut up!'" "I'm confused," I said. "Of course, I do believe you,
but are you certain that your reporting and analysis of this matter is exactly right?
Is it possible that she has cast a spell because you killed bugs earlier this day —
and you are overwhelmed with guilt? As your lawyer, I would argue that you
did exactly right by killing with a vegetable, rather than squirting from a can.
And by the way, I think you should calm down and ditch the wire. It's used
to block the detainees from getting out. The government can still get in your house
at will. Besides, I am getting wet and must go inside. I cannot afford
to catch a cold, develop a disability, and become dependent on the kindness of our State."
Martha L. Deed lives on the banks of the Erie Canal in North Tonawanda in a house whose crises and misfortunes cause poetry to be made. Political and cultural missteps inflame her as well. Recent publications include: 3X3X3, New Verse News, The Buffalo News, CLWN WR, Shampoo, Concelebratory Shoehorn Review, Other Voices in Poetry, and her chapbooks: 65 x 65 (small chapbook project, 2006), Intersections: a twenty day journal of the unexpected (2006), and 15 (2006). Recent web art collaborations with Millie Niss appear in the Electronic Literature Collection, Iowa Review on the Web and elsewhere. Martha's website: www.sporkworld.org/Deed.