The Financial Lives of the Poets Read Free Page B

maybe we’re dead already. Mom knew it, that there would always be another 7/11. And suddenly I understand her fear of terrorism wasn’t fear for herself. She wasn’t flying on any more airplanes. She was afraid for me, afraid for her kids and her grandkids, for all the hungry, lost boys. Afraid for the world she knew she was leaving. As she lay there dying, she must have realized there was nothing she could do anymore to protect the people she loved. Just as there’s nothing I can do for my boys anymore, my boys who will one day freak out alone in the tight warm aisles of a world beyond their understanding. I may as well be dead for all the help I can be to them. (My boys stir, agreeing that it’s their scary world now, their hard, hard world: go on, old man; rest now; sleep.) And in my fraying head there plays a news medley of war and instability, financial collapse and bad schools; forbearance, foreclosure, eviction; cynicism, climate crisis, 7/11—and the melody switches to my personal theme song (Concerto of Failure and Regret in E minor) as the life bleeds out from my feet and puddles in the hallway….
    And this is when the unlikeliest peace comes, and I smile. Because as fucked as the world is, as grim as the future surely seems to be, as grim as it revealed itself to be for my mother as she lay dying of the tumor that kills us all, there is a truth I cannot deny, a thing no creditor can take; even as my doomed boys stir in the cold unknowing of predawn sleep, even as the very life leaches out of me, soaks into the berber, into the cracks of my arid grave, I must grudgingly admit—
    —that was one great goddamn burrito.

Giving to Charity
     
     
    “H EY, THE GUY’S COMING to blow the sprinklers,”
Lisa says as she blows through the kitchen,
in a billowing skirt, and I can barely keep
my head up—something I forgot to do?
     
     
    Ah, I remember now: sleep. I forgot to sleep, after I got home high from 7/11, spending instead the hour before dawn worrying and flipping between CNN and Cartoon Network—endless politics and the Go Go Gophers, international financial crises and Klondike Kat.
    And apparently I’m still stoned—and a huge proponent of today’s weed—big fan. In fact, I wish I could invest in the dude who Frankensteined it up there in B.C. There used to be a cranky old government reporter at my paper named Abe Cowley, who always ranted that “kids now are fucked,” because they’d never be able to afford real estate or find jobs—I couldn’t always follow his rant—but if it ever comes up again I’ll say, Yeah, Abe, you’re right, kids today have no future, but Christ, have you tried their pot? At the table Teddy reaches past me for the milk. I think of the hours and brain cells that went into getting that simple white jug and I feel strangely proud. Lisa blows through the kitchen again—we pass like storm fronts now—this time she has her jacket on and she tells me, “Before you take the kids to school, don’t forget to turn off the water and roll up the hoses.” When I don’t say anything, she asks, “Matt?”
    Beneath the table, I click my heels together. “Jawohl, herr commandant.”
    Note: for future marriage-enriching banter, avoid Nazi humor.
    Smart, round Teddy slides the milk over to wispy little brother Franklin, who teeters it before finally pouring milk on the counter. He diverts the wayward stream toward the bowl, but it hits his upturned spoon and splashes even more on the counter. Today’s milk spill looks like the state of Florida. I grab a dishtowel and sop.
    “Hell, I can blow out the sprinklers,” my daft father says. He’s having one of his sharper moments—eyes clear as he stares out the window, gray hair bursting cactus-like off his head. He watches the horizon for something. Grips his spoon over his coffee like a battle knife. Two white pills sit in front of him, right where I left them, Aricept, the medication he takes for his cobwebby