Memo to Agency:
CLEAR THE DECKS _ Run desire metrics on this
new thanato-tourism and ping me back asap _
Scramble the screen scrapers & launch the
web crawlers now _ Get me intel on any brand lift
on social _ If this has legs, we’ll pry open the
mouths of every dead one ferrying the Styx, reach
into their throats before the unwashed masses get there
and harvest every obol, enough debouched gold
to blaze the night sky, enough to blind the sun _
I see us getting filthy on the recent dead _
Trickle Up
When they lifted their Goût de Diamants
and clinked glasses, the crystal rang
like laughter, the beautiful people recalling
what the policy wonk had said:
that it was good economic policy to
make the wealthy even richer, that
some of that bounty would leak down
on the working class, benefitting
the whole of society.
Everyone at the soirée
liked the image of a thin dribble
pissing on the working stiffs.
Who would know better than the posh people
that money doesn’t trickle down;
it oozes up to the offshore-account class
where it’s held with an iron fist,
and the only thing that trickles down
is contempt.
William Ross is a Canadian writer living in Ontario. He wrote the Introduction to Epistles to the Torontonians (Oak Knoll Press). His poems have appeared in Bluepepper, Humana Obscura, New Note Poetry, and Cathexis Northwest Press. New work is forthcoming in *82 Review and The New Quarterly.
Image: unsustainablemagazine.com
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Heavy Feather Review 