Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

When they were young, I would ask my children which social cause they wished to donate to. During Thanksgiving, I gave them the assignment to research a nonprofit they wanted to support. They decided to donate to our local animal shelter and food bank. Not that we had extra funds, but it felt important to engender a spirit of giving as a counterbalance to the end of the year emphasis on shopping and spending. I feared my children, as adults, would measure their identity and self-worth by the size of their paycheck and not their heart.

Today’s poem disentangles the quest for money, transactional desire, and lyric subjectivity. Its teasing interplay of language brings into close proximity art, social class, and manners of currency.

00000000
by Erin Marie Lynch

I have desired most
to be desired

Last drops of juice
squeezed from the lime

Husked and thereafter
gone my givingness

      *

Oh, handsome men!
I’m sick of them

The new girlfriends
look like me
or I look like
the old girlfriends

      *

Their fathers
sell the missiles
their grandfathers 
designed

drunk on
their wine 
I slept warm
in their past

      *

Now I’m brought
to consideration
of trust funds

      *

(Not at all a proper subject for the lyric, my teacher said)

      *

Nothing follows generations
like zeroes in bank accounts

and a resulting politeness 
concerning origins

      *

Debt like a lyric
situation constrains

until having been 
exited it once again
becomes illusory

      *

the similarities end there

      *

and yes I have desired
most some money
some money without trying

      *

more cushioned 
than my mother’s rage

her joy
a silent deep-sea creature
monstrous with its almost-human face

      *

You (Fed Loan Servicing)
lifted delicate unagi
to my lips as I reclined 
on a white leather sofa

      *

I am all deferrals
and transfers now

      *

My country climbs
an upward line
of militarized
spending

      *

Last week depositing
a twenty-five dollar 
check for a poem
from a state 
university

I moved again 
from object to subject
to subjection

reciting my ATM code
with my index
by heart

      *

From blood
comes money 
from blood

      *

And you (Chase Bank)
put your arms around me
in your parents’ summer
home and out French
doors I saw blue water

      *

My country
makes up zeroes 
every day

      *

Still it all
and them
I wanted

      *

But take me past
the moment of complicity
piss-warm pool of admission

      *

There must be some
form of doing

some form of having done

Even privately

      *

I want to have
done something

      *

(See Figure I: as of yet empty)

      *

Unthinkable to think
outside myself I

      *

For twenty years, the nuclear launch code at US weapons silos was set to 00000000, 
to minimize delay

      *

My country
pervaded by
an inarticulable
lyric pressure

      *

Small desire
small has it kept me

I shudder like a bad transmission 

      *

My country
occurred 

occurs daily

both with
and without
my permission

      *

The ease
with which I typed
that code

      *

A missile also
is a situation

illusory

to every I
outside it

      *

The lyric’s 
constrained

speaker’s
small desire

      *

The ease
the speed

One second
Less

Twenty-five dollars
Blue water

      *

On the other side
of self-recognition
lies a secret
undulating form

that has followed me
for generations

      *

Hereafter
I desire
to become

      *

By heart
By heart
By heart

"00000000" by Erin Marie Lynch from REMOVAL ACTS © 2023 Erin Marie Lynch. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Graywolf Press.