Mammon


What you don't have, you want. The air
is fat and rubbery. You wake up and you are
working. You go to bed and you are not

sleeping. You are crushing the mansions
of ants with your toes. You never even notice,

their lives going luckily out of this
earth—this earth you'd even bet
against your breath for more money,

the bagworms burning black holes
in your pockets. Your children aren't even

dead yet, sounds ominous. Some weird smoke
in your phone when business calls, or
billowing out from between the legs

of your wife, her tamarind glazed dress
hiked up around her thighs, coins flooding out

on the floor so you lick them, and somewhere
in the desert, men you have abducted
are down on their knees, hands tied

behind their backs, blindfolds made
from their t-shirts' coming darkness,

and all of them turn their powdered wigs
to the heavens, O beautiful for spacious, unmitigated
desire. You unfurl your talons and touch them.


- Matt Hart (from Sixth Finch)

***