by Diane Raptosh
I
The U.S. is broker than all get out is how it’s been put.
I’m broke, no bread, I mean like nothing,
Ray Charles belted, and he meant it. The wood thrush
through twin voice boxes sings with himself. Bup bup
bup. You can break the bank, break land, break fasts: a horse
that’s Cowboy Broke is double fried.
Betty ate some bitter batter. There is this game
plan called the Double Irish Defense. It quietly
moves firms’ profits
through Ireland and the Netherlands, clean
into Bermuda.
This land is growing cash
the way Old Brooklyn sprouted
weed in guiltless backyards: sanitation workers
seized more than nineteen tons of pot
from city lots alone, summer of ’51. The next
year, a crop was found beside the Brooklyn
Federal Building. Alongside dandelion rosettes. And tissue pips.
Declare a war on that.
II
When strapped for cash you can’t exactly stick up Carl’s Junior.
I’ve got kids, like I said. Their eyeballs glide back
and forth across my face the way ant larvae sway
to say feed me. You ever stared into that? Sutton never would
rob a bank if a baby cried or a woman freaked at the sight
of his Thompson. He’d step outside to roll a Bull Durham
or try on some waterproof pants for his window washer disguise.
I like to think of him as my stunt-double, the single
meal at my table. If you have one
buck in your wallet that’s more
than the tax burden of Citibank for a year. Fine
is not a sound. I didn’t have a plan. The sun began mooning me
that July day, nudging me toward the front doors of Wells Fargo.
That was my first one. It takes thirteen
million calories to raise up a child. Times that
by three, and that’s a ton of Spicy BBQ Six Dollar Meals,
even at $3.99 pre-tax—sometime during which deal Wells Fargo
guped a whole firm that hopes to keep being called Wachovia Wachovia Wachovia
III
I’ve hovered on the Twitter trends for days.
But nowhere did this fact click through—
The Fortune 500 now runs the Republic. Hit-and-run
sleight of hand and tongue—Peter Piper picked
the purse of pickled workers. Prisons
both empty towns and keep them alive.
Videos of me tucking a gun at my waist and a wad of fat
bills in my left-hand front pocket went suddenly viral. I need money
to feed my kids, you see
me say. The sheriff ID’d me through telephone tips.
They claim I wasn’t living with children
at time of arrest, but that’s a flat lie.
The gun wasn’t real, the fierceness a stunt to veil frailty: I had toquit
my barista shifts just before Christmas. The Kickin’ Cup filed
a complaint. Couldn’t make bills. The system
will have to call you back. What’s just one inch
past the edge of the universe? A small band
of men have made off with the wealth. My cellmate always smelled like malt vinegar.
IV
Among us rosarians, the line dividing old
and modern roses is 1867—the year the hybrid tea
was introduced. The antiques earned their bloated
odors: the Boule de Neige, a Bourbon, spouts white blooms
that smell like cold cream. A single blossom
of Sombreuil, the white-flowered climbing tea,
fills a whole room like thoughts
that choose to groom their own
thinking. When I sing in the shower, I swerve
to the left to make room
for a possible harmony. Towns
get their prisons and fill them
with folks who vend their dime bags.
But for stealing a billion dollars?
The Declaration of Independence
was printed on hemp. Right piece
of art if you ask me,
little nets of madness on the writing.
Diane Raptosh teaches literature and creative writing at The College of Idaho. She has published three books of poems, Just West of Now (Guernica Editions, 1992), Labor Songs (Guernica, 1999), and Parents from a Different Alphabet: Prose Poems (Guernica, 2008). Her work has previously appeared in The New Verse News. She may be reached at draptosh(at)collegeofidaho.edu.
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