FOUR POEMS

The Campaign We found ourselves to be quite fondof the ad campaignundermining late-stage capitalism: how the sprightly old womankept bursting into private conversationsat the candlelit restaurant and shouting, You can’t eat nickels!!and then doing that little hip-hop dancethat was surprisingly sexual. But then, over dinner, after draininga second bottle of prosecco as the wardrifted in from the living room TV, we started wondering howeffective the meme had actually been,given that we’d nonetheless spent nothing but money on loving one another,and the pills our children took were growingmore and more costly every day. The Monster in Late Middle Age The MRI revealed a tumor in the shapeof an angel, complete with finely wroughthalo, and the curved shoulder of a wingthat seemed to hold the faint fish-scaledpattern of feathers. The intern dismissedthe halo as ancillary tissue but seemedfascinated by the…