THE MONEYED CLASS

How did money get to be the legal tender of your feelings; dollars and cents

and a fat, round number in your investment account,

not even for spending, but accumulating, accruing

a tidy sum inside your brain?

You’ve no object in mind, merely wish to turn your face

into a cash register,

one that only opens to add more, not take out to give

to those in need, not even to yourself.

You have a soul, I’m sure, but it’s a ledger that inputs everything

but pays for mothing,

knows only profit, could never contend with loss;

every number is wedded to its plus sign.

There’s no laughter in you, just spreadsheets, no love,

merely an addiction to calculation;

you save your tears for a drop in the stock market,

your aesthetics for presidents done out in green.

Just look at you, crisp as a newly printed Benjamin but as

hard as copper, as silver,

wealth for personality, a checkbook for a heart;

money hasn’t corrupted you, it’s just turned you into money.

Andrej Bilovsky (he/him) is a poet and performance artist. Former editor of Masculine-Feminine and Kapesnik. His poetry can be found at the Quiver and Down In The Dirt.