From Volume 38: "I always dream about money: or the mediocre happy poem" by Jacqueline Morrill

I always dream about money: or the mediocre happy poem
By Jacqueline Morrill

She answers the door almost naked

But for leopard print undies

The asshole of an orange cat stuffed under her right arm

His sleeping head cradled against her bare breast

And a plate of meringue cookies balanced in the other hand

“Hey babe!”

This is what our life looks like

What my mother has come to call the “poor phase”

As if everything is temporary

And we’re just waiting for the next level.

It is the reason why my hair looks like straw and rat tail

Why our everyday costume is more than slightly shabby.

Some nights, with our bodies bracing against the cold—

Because I refuse to keep the oil burning,

I pray we might find a winning lottery ticket lost under the driver’s seat.

But we don’t buy lottery tickets, no extra cash,

And we don’t play scratchies because my dad is superstitious.

My sister enters Publisher’s Clearing House every month and hasn’t won yet.

I am sad for myself

I am sad for this generation of degenerate debt-collecting hipsters

With dreams of poetry and poppies

Told we could be anything we want

An overwrought population of millennial potters

And bakers

And candlestick makers

Thanks to Mr. Rogers and Big Bird

for our downtrodden mantra

All you have to do is dream and you can achieve.

But

My all poet friends are potheads

Smoke dangling words like grapes above their angry, hungry mouths

My working friends are tired

Earning less than the total of monthly bills

Living the life grad school and dean’s list has gifted

My parents are unemployed

Car salesmen are a dime a dozen

The cape house retirement forgotten.

I am an unpatriotic American,

Disgusted by jingoism with hopes for a better next month

Raise your glasses, here’s a toast to

Health insurance, job security, life insurance

Rent, electric, cable, phone, school loans, school loans

Gas, maybe groceries this week, more school loans,

Car insurance, mortgage, heat, life

Walking dead horny homunculus spitting ink

Onto signs reading God Bless the estimated 3650 homeless

Worcesterites hobnobbing from Kelly Square to Webster Square

Peg-legged, pit-mouthed, and sucking dry air from a God

We don’t

I can’t believe in anymore.

But today, when I see her smile

A soft furry purring thing at her side

The smell of red sauce stewing in the kitchen

And the ring on her fourth finger that matches my own

The ring that symbolizes the freedom to touch in ways Russia could never understand

The freedom to love in ways Uganda kills for

The freedom to proclaim unity in ways Arizona can never refuse

I don’t regret the $40 copay for intent to unionize document

Or the $75 marriage license

Or the $20 bottle of cava to celebrate

Or the $100 in tips saved up for three days

For tapas barely covering tiny square plates

Our swan-arm taste testing cold meat

that melts on our tongues to heal daily sores slow, slow.

Slowly.