Who Isn't Selling

Money is a sort of poetry, both
are barely human. And their hypo-
 
thetical exchange breeds
in me such an unknown
 
currency I begin
to grunt all animal, my value
 
rabid on the flux
of loss, stagnation, bitter fruit.
 
When I think about bitcoin—
I mean, spacetime, I think of the unmet
 
logic of its gesture, each must
extend to the outer moons
 
of grief. I keep accounts
of lamentation. I lick a balance
 
out of grief. I calculate returns on gravity
in living. Orbit those desperate
 
minor planets until I think
myself back into
 
an alchemy. Yet at every day
break I see there's so much
 
money, shit I mean, there's so
much light in its newness.
 
 
 

And Meanwhile, I Fucked Strangers

on Tuesday afternoons, in light in-
consolable with television, weed our eyes
 
bored into the other’s slacker
dilations.  I was a trash person, I lived 
 
in trash. I was only a woman
in public. I biked to seaside 
 
and sat in trash, spelled out in trash I wish 
this were a better
 
poem and more words, too, but seagulls
carried them away and built
 
a city. Named it Manhattan. A mis-
translation, we were in Queens. 
 
I envied their ambitions, mine
on thin reserve, mostly borrowed
 
from a friend though I sold my time 
in dollar slices. Tell me
 
you’re a whore, one stranger said, trying
his limits in less
 
than feeling. Artaud wrote that words
are only halfway to 
 
intelligence but please insert
them in me anyway, I want to know
 
what poetry is, besides funded
by low-rate retirement complexes. Besides
 
sewn from other peoples’
hours. Besides poor Echo
 
in her cave of self-
satisfaction. Three months ago
 
I had no interests, it was bliss
enough to make
 
my bed from. Thought I was
beyond all this, yet here
 
I am again
hardwired in these poses.