Done
       

They say "tender" and tender

means "pay" I say tender

but mean "soft" they win

the paupers are planted into

the same sure ground but here

dead-grass plots are (un)

marked with hand-sized

grave markers and I am an obese self

children slide on a nearby slide

this lamentation rising from their

moth-mouths, this view from

the top of it, is ugly, concussive

trash dumped under oleanders

severed gate-angels reaching for

in the ditch a bearded man pissing

with inconsequential growls or

derelicts or transients, palsied

topias, the unutilized, the repressed—

buried there I anticipate what

wealth is made of as a man in debt

whose assets without feature

include an imported water-damaged

faux wood dresser made of wood

byproducts the ahistorical richlessness

of shopping in such aisles shall be

the scatter-matter of my own

byproduct, my estate and my

epitaph my unpaid debt

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Copyright © 2018 Richard Greenfield All rights reserved
from Subterranean
Omnidawn
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission