Adam Smith
Every poet glistens with the dew
of money, but surely only some of them
truly have it. Never enough, wanting to know
what enough felt like, I buy fake versions
of the things I want on credit, my shelves
laden with zirconia, Prada knockoffs, and
pirated Oscar screeners. I’m driven by envy,
and gluttony, the desire to consume better
than anyone else, but the pleasure is only half
of what it should be, and so on until my house
is filled with objects that belong to Chase
and AmEx. I’ve been relentless and I’ve been
lucky, but that’s never been enough.
I’d sell my soul, but there aren’t any takers.
From Cruel Futures. Copyright © 2018 by Carmen Giménez Smith. Used with the permission of City Lights Books.
Simultaneity and Good Exposition are impossible in film and TV! Workplace shows tout hypercompetence and workaholism! Soap operas and sitcoms are the genre novels of television! TV villains have a paradoxical narcotic effect! Television makes spitefulness in men a siren song, but a venom in women! Reality television is filled with people who make banality into cash! My petty Madame Bovarian despair is at the core of all my watching! Violence is more famous than pornography! The serial killer is fetishized because America collects everything! How frangible our women, one choice from death! Let’s bring that back on CBS!
From Cruel Futures. Copyright © 2018 by Carmen Giménez Smith. Used with the permission of City Lights Books.
all of my belongings in the box of my room
enumerated are books and pages the stench of evening body
the halo hair on my daughter’s sketch of us glass of flat diet pepsi
clips of words prescriptions photos checkbook and krazy glue
ipad home of my crosswords lamp and husband hooks briante
kloaka and herrera headphones input broadsides tibetan flags
bad to the bone legs suttree hyphenated affliction ruthie text
american girl catalog detritus of literary life the material kind
lines and strategies from said husband’s books bled into this
din of dr. seuss and smell of a swamp cooler stacks
called islands laundry in all its states my dysphoria krystal text
today I peeked into someone else’s life of real wood floors
of islands through their avatars we all fixate on a palace
decent soundsystems the laptop is my portal tunnel vision
scissors fancy pen someone else’s moleskine I’m lonely jade plant
ikea nightstand wallet from rosa notebook from lily necklace from yael
son’s miró-like drawing the son my double and my fresh joy
four pillows intermittent acquiring and liking strappy sandal in a zappo
box an ambien purchase that time somebody scuffed my face
I objected with a betty boop mask incense powerade zero
From Cruel Futures. Copyright © 2018 by Carmen Giménez Smith. Used with the permission of City Lights Books.