Explore Poems: Money & Economics

The blades of grass are writhing
their torsos,

            sexualized
unnecessarily.

The people are uninterested
in …

I went to Ulta Beauty to buy perfume
I was horny and I wanted the universe inside my nose
The lit shelves…

carbonated water, high-rise between your momma and your daddy people, neutral ground, caramel in the…

and yes it does beg
the question why
a nine-year-old needs
two twenty-dollar bills still
sticky and …

& I immediately think of Cheryl, her Malik, his beloved
obsession with the team’s orange & blue, a sunset…

At the gangway, our demand was a straw pava.
We wore our demand jauntily cocked across our skull.
So what…

I know you’re hungry for it.
More money. More news. Desperate

for any laurel that parades you
as happier…

The rich report greater levels of happiness,
                                          & the study goes on to demonstrate
how we humans use money to save...

The sun was losing
a long gold tooth

on the linoleum
of the labor and delivery ward.

I lifted my plastic bracelet to the green eye
of the barcode gun and it sang

the first note
of money’s national anthem.

Redeem, a word with its feet
in the cement...

Here, the sentence will be respected.

I will compose each sentence with care, by minding what the rules of writing dictate.

For example, all sentences will begin with capital letters.

Likewise, the history of the sentence will be honored by ending each one...

The harbor is a blaze of silver waves is
the North and East rivers, God is

the words in the Book of  Job,
litanies of roses, a crimson solstice moon,

my skin is skin in the game, too,
Lorca’s shadow still is standing

on Wall Street...

Texaco. A lovely word. Ma chérie mâle. But I’m sick,
Shell-Belle. I’m driving slowly on guano. Seuls de petits
fragments existent encore, you hear that drilling apparatus?
After death I ought to hear new things. Loveless Shell-Belle.
Heroin contessa. Port Arthur baby with your...

Delirium in the downtown mall today:
      Burt Reynolds! All the henna-haired girls
            sneer, while their mothers, enthralled, say,

“I saw you in this, I saw you in that–
      you were marvelous, simply...

this is what they will not tell you
and this is what you must know
if you hear nothing else i say
hear this
you cannot live in fear
you cannot heal in fear
fear will never make you stronger

fear is the language many doctors speak
they’ll...

We cannot buy it in bulk at Trader Joe's,
Swap it for gold, or hoard shares of Grace, Inc.,
To hedge against bad luck. We acquire it
Without contract, promissory notes, or IOUs,
Neither codicils nor fine print. We gather
Grace safe from litigation or...

If a jar of jelly is $2.98
& a loaf of Hawaiian bread is $4
Then how much bail money will I need when I kill everyone in my house
for eating all the bread
and jelly in 5 minutes?
 
Black Momma Math
If Black Momma...

melting glaciers      
                       frighten me when      
appearing on      
my street as      
downpours      
a feeling I send      
                     ...

I feel middle class when I'm in love.
I think it's all the poached eggs on bird-seed bread,
staying up all night on Zoopla—imagine
waking under cottage beams,
the laughter in a garden. Kids.
A little boy with gold hair
keeps standing in my dreams.

I read...

We were so poor.
The air was a quiver
of thoughts we drew from

to poise, unsaid
in the ineffable
world we lived in.

Sun, scarcely a penny
in that dreary setting,
every night gave up

to a smog-strewn avalanche
of searchlights, crossing
the heavens, a bicker

to buy a new used...

After Donne

exeunt my heart, evangelical god, for you
            are still frosted and feathered somewhere
in the eighties, still fed with the fates of fetuses,
           “fairies,” and the virginities of fatherless girls.
you inhabited...