Every Day Is Sale Day
If I had no money for every time
I saw a stock photo of an empty
pocket being pulled inside-out, I’d
have no money. My friend and I
sat on the marble steps, eating
nothing and drinking also nothing,
and she told me, right there
on the white stone’s subcutaneous
blueness, that her father really
should’ve been left-handed,
but in school they wouldn’t let him.
They forbade it. And now he uses
the right hand to julienne carrots
and dial the phone, and it’s all very
serviceable, but think about it —
that lost potential. Who knows
what he might’ve gone onto.
He might’ve been a surgeon
or a concert harpsichordist. And she
said that kind of thing — does it
happen here, too? Well, look
at us. Look at this crystalline city.
We are the side that was always
allowed to be dominant. What
did we do? Do you see a saved
life here? Do you hear a fugue?
The Greatest Two Minutes in Sports
Brims and booze and panelled
rooms and paintings
titled go man go and pharaoh —
What explains us
Have we co-evolved with waste
and are we here
to be its forward vessel
How long until science
admits that we are worthless
except as carriers —
instinctively we nurse it, we pass it
down, we’re done
Photograph © VMJones
