What Money Looks Like

What Money Looks Like

The closing of the Cactus Café surprised no one;
However, the purchase of a $700,000 rug did.

Yet why would it? It was a long time since
They had viewed these ants as students
Even longer since the time before
They were RGUs
Revenue generating units

(yes, I know the secret names They call us,
whisper in the darkness of the old vaults.
In the ancient times I might have been there
with Them, placed on a knee and fondled,
so gently, while they schemed)

It came in riding on the backs of 30 men
Heavy not with renminbi
But foreign U.S. money.
(The Chinese call it mei yuan – beautiful dollar)

But I can only surmise what it looks like
Between classes

Press my lips to it
In daydreams

While Calhoun runs out of chalk, yet again

I will die before seeing what my waitressing dollars have bought,
This embroidered kingdom I have helped build. Envy
The workers who made it, for they have touched
What I never will.

And here is how they trap us,
Not with a roar and the ringing slam of a coffin lid

But with the tiniest of nails,
Here a nail,
There a nail,
Everywhere a nail nail.