Vote Because It's Your One Chance to Make Some Billionaires Sad

My father fucking hated rich people. I mean, he despised the hell out of them as a group for simply existing. Some of this was born of his hardscrabble upbringing on the streets of Brooklyn in the 1950s. He went from struggling working-class kid to lower middle-class family man by the time he died at age 46, with some stops along the way to solidly middle class and to food stamps-needing poverty. But it wasn't simple resentment. He didn't aspire to be rich. He aspired to not have to worry all the time about money, a far more humble dream. Rich people were pricks, see, because of their material indulgences and their seeming freedom from consequences for their actions. He took great joy whenever a rich person suffered some fall from grace. Seriously, few things made him happier than seeing a rich man sad. This midterm election would thrill him.

If you look at a list of the 10 biggest individual/family donors to political campaigns this year, it's pretty fucking clear who the billionaires, as a whole, support. There is exactly one, George Soros, who gives primarily (or exclusively) to Democrats. The other nine give primarily (or exclusively) to Republicans, including sad, ranting pestilence Elon Musk, movie villains the Winklevi, and legit nutzoid cockscab Paul Singer, along with assorted investors, shipping magnates, and other assmites. They all desperately want the GOP to keep the majority in at least the Senate because they can slap down the House's subpoenas and investigations. But if the entire Congress is Democratic, then some shit is more likely to go through the fan and actually land on these pampered and powdered pussies.

Early voting has gotten and is getting and will be getting under way across the country, and if you need to motivate someone to fucking vote, for fuck's sake, and vote for Democrats, then tell them that this is a rare chance to make some billionaires sad. I mean, really, how many chances do you, average Joe or Jane or  Jordan (to include a nonbinary name), get in this life to do something that might cause Elon Musk to cry? They are precious few, and not buying a Tesla isn't really one of them. This is like walking onto a yacht and kicking Jeff Bezos in the nuts. "Yeah, even rich balls can feel pain," you might yell.

Musk is going to end up dumping around a half-billion dollars into this election, if his current donation rate holds, to try to buy his way out of congressional oversight. The sad part is that this amount of money doesn't affect his wealth at all. He'll have made it back by the end of November, probably more. The sadder part is that our post-Citizens United campaign cash orgy has gotten so out of hand that the safe words have been abandoned and the billionaires are just fucking democracy to death with fistfuls of cash and laughing that no one is doing a goddamn thing to stop them. 

But what Musk can't buy is your ability to walk into a voting booth or a little voting cubby and click the machine or mark your ballot for Democrats. Even if he gave you a thousand bucks before you went to polls or filled in your mail-in ballot, you can still do what you want once it's you and a list of candidates. Musk can't stop what I hope is coming if Democrats get investigative power. Hell, Musk himself has even "joked" that if Democrats look into how he dicked over the world with his DOGE bullshit, including the mass murder of millions through his actions, he'd go to prison. 

It's not just Musk. All of those crypto dicks and AI douches, who are going in big for Republicans, would be looking at the potential (and, goddamn, they better not fuck it up) for genuine oversight from a Congress that actually acts like a co-equal branch of the fucking government and not Trump's ass wipe dispenser, cleaning him up after he shits all over himself and everyone else. All those clips of "Ruben Gallego Destroys Some Asshole at a Hearing" are functionally meaningless beyond making you feel good. However, if Gallego is part of a Democratic-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he has the power to genuinely fuck up the shit of, say, Open AI's Sam Altman, who simply declined to go to a recent hearing. 

Maybe I'm just my father's son, but, goddamn, I wanna ruin the days of some rich fucks who think they're untouchable. Maybe they'll prove to be. Maybe Democrats are so corrupted by their billionaires' funds that they'll choke on taking a few down. But if you wanna at least try to put the ultra-wealthy on notice that their days of being above or beyond the law are over, you gotta be willing to make them cry. And with one simple action, you can can make that happen. Get out there and do it. You'll feel really good about yourself if we succeed. 

Ongoing Bullshit About Statues of Christopher Columbus, Genocidal Maniac

Christopher Columbus was a genocidal maniac and con artist who didn't know where the fuck he was going when he set out on the Atlantic Ocean to find passage to China. His calculations on his journey were so wrong that Portugal told him to go fuck himself with his yardarm. Motherfucker thought until the end of his greedy, murderous, enslaving life that he had found a passage to Asia. It's not even clear that he was Italian, despite the pathetic idiots who cling to that identity; various sources say he was Portuguese and Polish or maybe Catalan and Jewish. It's pretty telling that none of these groups are trying very hard to claim him, like "No, we're good, you keep that prick." (Note: I am Italian. Fuck Columbus.)

Starting a few years ago, a number of people decided that maybe it was some fucking bullshit to have statues everywhere that honored someone who encouraged and even rewarded the slaughter and mutilation and rape and enslavement of indigenous people. So dozens of them were torn down, removed, or moved to less prominent locations, especially in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests. Bringing attention to racial injustices and bullshit tributes spread from Black people to other groups. When you hear people criticize "wokeness" (or "Woke 1," god help us), they forget that almost all of it was a valuable reassessment of how we have built a society around racism and racist symbolism. So suck all our dicks, Columbus statues.

Now that the country as a whole has shifted from approving of wokeness to now being against any of the progressive connotations of the term, and now that we're run by a cabal of dickheads who would gladly go back to forcing slaves to dig for gold for them under threat of a behanding, all of a sudden, people want their fucking Columbus statues back. 

Just as you'd expect, a statue of Columbus now sits on whatever remains of the White House grounds. President Donald Trump, who always loves when he can honor a fellow rapist, has been cheering on Columbus like he's a crazed woman who wants to marry an imprisoned serial killer. In March of this year, a replica of a statue that had been tossed into the Inner Harbor in Baltimore in 2020 was plopped in front of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building like a pile of shit in human form. 

Trump has for years gone all-in on sucking Columbus's dick and, by extension, the dicks of Italian-American leaders who embarrass the rest of us with their worship of both. Apparently, "the radical left communists hate Columbus and they want to abolish Columbus Day. They're still trying very hard," Trump blurbled. He claimed that he's "resurrecting Columbus," like he's Jesus with Lazarus or some shit, and he called Columbus a "hero," which is like calling Ted Bundy "an expert in sorority rooming management."

In that same speech this past week, Trump demanded that the city of Columbus, Ohio, restore the statue of their namesake that had been taken down in 2020. Then, Mayor Andrew Ginther, who is still mayor now, said that it represented "patriarchy, oppression and divisiveness" and something better should be put in its place. A recent community group report said the statue, which is in storage, should be displayed in a "community facility" with proper historical context that doesn't involve lying about what a son of a bitch he was. 

The movement to restore Columbus is taking place elsewhere in the country. In Chicago, an Italian-American committee is trying to get three statues, including one in Grant Park, put back, even reaching out to Trump for help, which probably means Trump naming some random activist citizens so his idiot hordes can inundate them with doxxing and death threats. There's an ongoing battle over a statue in Syracuse, NY; that one should have been removed two years ago, but constant litigation has kept it in the center of town. The removed statue in Wilmington, Delaware, may end up returning when a move to prevent that failed at the City Council. Bridgeport, Connecticut, debated whether to put the statue back up and it looks like it will be restored. You get the idea: little battles everywhere a statue was taken down.

There's something so sad about a nation that can't give up its myths even when it's shown that the myths are bullshit, the heroes are pedophiles, and we can very much have a say here in how the Columbus clusterfuck of atrocities tale is told. It's of a piece of Trump and the nutzoid GOP's war on anything that would make white people look bad. Making people believe lies about Columbus rather than teaching them the truth about Jim Crow or migrant workers or the genocide of indigenous people is just easier than telling them the truth. "DEI" means just that: stop lying about the awful shit from our past and in our present.

One last note: the Columbus statue in Baltimore was in that city's Little Italy. In May, on the pedestal that remains, liberated from the colonizing madman that once stood there, an activist named Duane "Shorty" Davis placed a toilet. One local legislator got all upset because the local police said they weren't bothering to investigate, which seems exactly right. All the statues of Columbus should be reshaped into shitters that we can all use, especially on Indigenous Peoples' Day. 

The Cornell Rape Case from 2016 Shows How Not Much Happens Even If It's Handled Better Than Jane Doe's

The Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper at Cornell University, published an article on February 1, 2016, that said, "A female student reported she was sexually assaulted at approximately 2:00 a.m. on Sunday, after the perpetrator led her to a bedroom." The assault occurred at the Psi Upsilon fraternity house in the early morning of January 31, when "a white male, approximately 170 pounds, around 5 feet 9 inches tall, with a medium complexion and wavy dark brown or black collar-length hair" attacked the female student. As for what happened, he lured the woman to his room, and "he then locked the door, pushed the woman against the door and tried to have sexual intercourse with her twice from behind. He is also accused of forcing the woman to have oral sex with him and pushing her onto the bed where he allegedly sexually abused her with his fingers, records show."

A Deputy Chief of the Cornell University Police Department said that "Reports like this are relatively rare in our community because sex offenses are significantly under-reported." Unlike the 2024 horrific gang rape of Jane Doe, the CUPD's referral to local law enforcement in Ithaca and Tompkins County was acted on. A warrant was issued for an arrest. Still, Tompkins County DA Gwen Wilkinson blamed "underage drinking" for rapes and sexual assaults. 

The fraternity was given a temporary suspension from any activities while this was an ongoing investigation.

By the end of the first week of February, 21 year-old Wolfgang Ballinger turned himself in to face the felony charges: "attempted rape, criminal sexual assault, and sex abuse." Ballinger was the president of the Psi Upsilon chapter at Cornell where the rape took place. (Note: I'm using "rape" because forced oral sex and penetration with fingers are rape in the way any normal human understands the word, even if legal definitions vary.) 

Ballinger's father ran the very popular music venue Webster Hall in New York City where Wolfgang worked bar. Every woman is feeling how chilling that thought is: this guy in charge of your drinks.  Because Ballinger came from money, which inevitably means lawyers throwing everything at the prosecutor to derail the case, he wasn't formally indicted until July 2016 and only for one charge, first degree sexual abuse. 

In April 2017, Ballinger took a deal where he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of "forcible touching." In 2017, current DA Matthew Van Houten had taken over from Wilkinson, and he said that the victim "is wholeheartedly in support of this resolution." She did not want to have to go through the trauma of a trial. 

At the sentencing hearing, the woman made a statement, and you should read the excerpts in articles here and here for how the rape affected her and her family. This part really got me: "The day I went to the hospital for my rape kit, I had to first wait for another woman to finish being seen. When the nurse finally arrived at my room, she looked at me with sad, sunken eyes. ‘On average, 1 in 10 rapes are reported. That means 20 girls were likely assaulted last night because two of you went to the police today.’ I just looked back at her quietly. I didn’t feel lucky to be one of the women with the courage to come forward, I only felt grief. I am standing here today for the 18 other women that wanted to deal with their assault on their own terms.”

And this: "No matter how much money or status he has, it doesn’t let him take what he likes without consequence. Because there will be consequences. I will not stop. You cannot break me." 

Ballinger had already been expelled from Cornell, although he had started taking classes at NYU and Hunter College in NYC. He was sentenced to six years probation and given a fine, the strictest sentence allowed for the misdemeanor. His probation conditions included needing to stay away from children, relatives excepted, and a prohibition "from entering establishments where alcohol is sold 'for on-premise consumption.'" Oh, but he had an exception for his job at Webster Hall. He could still serve drinks to women there. Now, he's a "hospitality professional" who managed a hotel.

As for Psi Upsilon, the fraternity had its recognition by Cornell revoked for a 3-year period because of this case, other incident reports (including fights where racist words were flying at non-white students), and violating the interim suspension by having a party during it. And then, after an appeal, the Vice President for Student and Campus Life reduced it to 1.5 years. In an unexpected turn, the Board of Governors for the national Psi Upsilon body closed the Cornell house completely in September 2017 after a racist incident.

There you go. That's what happened when an on-campus rape allegation followed the proper process. It's pathetic, sure, but it's something, and that something is sadly reflective of the outcome of rape cases across the country. 

But here's the thing: Cornell knew what was going on at its fraternities and still let them continue. It knew how bad things were. It knew to the point that in December 2022, the Student Assembly issued a resolution "Condemning Greek Life" at the university. Among its assertions, "Cornell has a known rape culture where victims are silenced and perpetrators are often never held accountable for their actions" and "24% of undergraduate women who experienced nonconsensual sexual contact reported the most serious incident occurred at a fraternity chapter house or annex." It also mentions the 2016 case. 

The resolution didn't directly call for an end to fraternities at Cornell, but that's what should happen there and everywhere.

Trump Blames Biden for Things Biden Had Nothing to Do With

We know that President Donald "Wipe me, Natalie" Trump and his entire syphilitic administration love to blame every possible negative thing on President Joe Biden. Every blemish in DC, every policy that they don't like, every statistic that doesn't go their way, every hike in prices, every fucking thing. Hell, I'm sure Trump blames Biden for the fact that Melania would rather masturbate with a fake gold cherub than touch her husband. Any chance any of them get, they fucking blame Biden, despite the fact that, to my knowledge, Biden hasn't been anywhere near the levers of power for nearly 20 months. 

Of course, often, shit has nothing to do with Biden or is an exaggeration. Today, in fact, Trump said, "Oil is less expensive now than it was under the Biden administration." And, sure, if you measure by 2022 prices, it is lower. It went up to around $116 a barrel due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and now it's at, roughly, $95. But when Trump took over from Biden, it was down to $75 a barrel, and by my awesome ability to do basic math, I can state with certainty that $75 is lower than $95. 

On Thursday, September 17,  Trump had one of his Dinner with the Rich Yokels events where he invited heads of hunting and fishing organizations and corporations to watch him sign some executive orders making life easier for them and shittier for the environment. One of the EOs was about a couple of things that irritate some fishing businesses: a NOAA rule that ordered a speed of "no more than 10 knots applying to all vessels 65 ft (19.8 m) or greater in overall length in certain locations and at certain times of the year along the east coast of the U.S. Atlantic seaboard" in order to protect migrating whales, and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which was designed to prevent overfishing and other issues that can harm that industry and the oceans. Fun fact: The Stevens is Ted Stevens, the longtime and now-dead Republican senator from Alaska. 

Here's how Trump described what he was doing: "The Biden administration tried to bludgeon the boating and maritime industry with a ridiculous boating speed limit of no more than 10 miles per hour" and "This order also expands fishing seasons and fishing quotas, undoing another Biden disaster." Wow, that Joe Biden really loves sea life. 

Except facts will fuck your shit up and here are the facts: That rule on the speed limit? That was finalized and put into effect in 2008 when the president was, in fact, George W. Bush. The Magnuson-Stevens Act on fishing limits was initially passed in 1976, when Gerald Ford was president, and renewed in 2006, when, yeah, it was Bush. I mean, sure, Biden was a senator and the vote was unanimous, so there's a slight connection. By the way, both houses of Congress were under Republican control in '06. 

The Biden administration had nothing to do with either thing. But that doesn't stop Trump from fucking that glory hole with the name "Biden" above it in black sharpie again and again. He doesn't even care if there's a mouth on the other side. He doesn't care if he gets splinters. He'll keep fucking it until his dick falls off.

Trump made it sound like he was changing everything on these two issues immediately. "You can go slightly faster than 10 miles an hour, like 120 miles an hour if you're crazy," he assured the fishing industry people, "but you can go as fast as you want. We have that order. It's all signed, sealed and delivered." Except, of course, that's not what the EO even did.  It "does not repeal or suspend the existing vessel speed rule. The current 10-knot limit remains in effect for most vessels 65 feet or longer in designated Seasonal Management Areas along the East Coast." In both cases, it simply directs relevant agencies to look into changing things. It's not a done deal. It might well turn out to be. But you cannot "go as fast as you want." 

Trump doesn't even understand what the hell he's signing. He's said as much earlier in the ceremony, when he signed the other EO. That one actually was undoing Biden policy, "a nationwide ban on the use of lead shotgun ammo for waterfowl hunting because of the material’s known toxicity for waterfowl and other bird species," according to noted anti-hunting rag Field & Stream magazine. But Trump had no idea what the hell that means, and that's coming from him:

"This order also protects the use of affordable, traditional... Well, this is pretty good. I never knew this was a problem, Doug. You're going to have to educate me, but you put it in, lead ammunition. Is ammunition... Lead ammunition was a problem, huh? Is it better than other ammunition, I assume, huh? That's pretty good. I don't know what the hell that means but I know one thing. You wanted it. You wanted it. And I'm here for you."

In other words, Trump hadn't seen or heard of the executive order before putting his name on it. He didn't give a single, solitary fuck. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asked for it and Trump didn't even care what it was. Not even one single moment of curiosity about the effects of lead ammo. It gave him an excuse to attack Biden on gun rights, and that's all he wanted to do.

And then, swear to fuck, he went on to tell the goddamn story about whether he'd rather get eaten by a shark or electrocuted underwater in a sinking electric boat again. At this point, I'll take the fucking shark.

A Totally Real Memo (Wink!) from the Department of Defe...War

A. From the Office of the Secretary of WAR, MOTHERFUCKERS!:

In accordance with Secretary of WAR, MOTHERFUCKERS! Pete "Peter" Hegseth's memo from this summer where the Secretary [note: Can we get that changed? Makes me sound like a chick- PH] informed our brave men (and women, for now) in uniform that no one is allowed to "be a pussy," and on wise, medically-sound guidance from Secretary of "Health" and "Human" Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is one of the good Moslems, we will begin testing all male service members at age 30 and over to ensure that the service member's level of the hormone testosterone (T) is acceptable. 

Testing procedures:
1. Groups of male service members will sleep in designated barracks the night before testing.

2. In the morning, Secretary Hegseth will go around to each bunk prior to service members waking and check to see if each member has an erection. If a service member does not have a full erection, Secretary Hegseth will engage with the service member's penis to bring it to full erection while an assistant times the length of time it takes to achieve full tumescence. Note: Secretary Hegseth requests that, if you wake up during this part of the test, you should continue to pretend you are asleep. AT NO TIME MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH SECRETARY HEGSETH. 

3. In groups of three or four, male service members will be brought into a room and asked to masturbate to ejaculation into a provided cup. Secretary Hegseth will be seated in a chair to watch each service member masturbate to ensure proper ejaculation occurs. The Secretary requests that service members only wear a white t-shirt and athletic socks as they enter the room. The Secretary will ask questions about the libidos and sexual activity of service members while they masturbate. Masturbation duration will be timed, with notes made if it take too long or too little time. As with the previous part of the test, DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH SECRETARY HEGSETH. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. 

4. Secretary Hegseth will personally test each semen sample by tasting it. He will be able to tell if the semen contains the correct minimum amount of testosterone by comparing it to the taste of his own semen, which he will provide for himself. Service members must stand at attention right after they have completed ejaculation while the Secretary tastes their semen and comments on various attributes he perceives. Even if Secretary Hegseth asks a direct question, DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH HIM. THE SECRETARY PERCEIVES ALL EYE CONTACT AS A THREAT AND MAY ACT ACCORDINGLY. 

5. Service members whose T is low will be forced to take regular injections of it in order to improve the service member's masculinity. If a service member refuses to receive the injections, they will be deemed "transgender" and forced to leave military service. 

6. Service members whose T is normal will be put back into regular duties.

7. Service members whose T level is above that of Secretary Hegseth's will be assigned to strip nude and oil wrestle the Secretary so he can prove that "You're not so tough." During these nude oil wrestling matches, DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH SECRETARY HEGSETH. HE CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VIOLENCE THAT WILL FOLLOW. THE SECRETARY MAY BE INTOXICATED AND HAS NO IMPULSE CONTROL EVEN ON GOOD DAYS.

8. If a service member defeats Secretary Hegseth at oil wrestling, that service member and his family will be deported. Probably to Liberia. 

9/11 Is Tired of This Dance

Staring in the mirror, 9/11 sighs. Even though it's generally only once a year now that anyone cares that she exists, she knows that 25 years means something magical to people, as if numbers that end in 5 or 0 carry a mystical force when, really, it's just the nature of humans to find arbitrary significance in things that are inevitable. 25 years was going to happen, she was going to be there for it, and she knows people will want her to look her best. She works on her eyelashes.

What 9/11 hates most about these kinds of anniversaries is the willful amnesia, where names like "Bush" and "Cheney" are intoned with reverence, as if they weren't the same monsters who regularly burst into her apartment and jacked off on her and made her march around with their cum on her face, calling anyone who came to her aid a "traitor" and sent out the squamous, smirking Karl Rove to destroy them. Now, on these occasions, she gets to hear perhaps how Bush tried to unite us or maybe some kind of insulting assertion that they weren't as bad as Donald Trump. They were, she knows, she knows, and she wants to scream. They were just as bad. They used her as an excuse to try to break down the nation and the world and rebuild it in their gnarled, corrosive image, with everyone an enemy until proven otherwise. And they would make her appear regularly and dance for their pleasure. 9/11 remembers all those nights in the Oval Office, with Rumsfeld and Rice pawing each other frantically, supremely aroused by her swaying and shaking, laughing as Colin Powell tried to avoid staring at her when they stripped her and dragged her into a threesome that left her empty and lost. Cheney and Bush sucked on their cigars and laughed. They put so much heroin into her veins those days so she couldn't protest. God, it was so many foul years before they finally let her be.

She puts on her lipstick. Yes, those filthy times may be at an end for her, with many of the worst of her rapists gratifyingly, finally dead, but 9/11 knows that what they did to her and in her name was the template for what came after, for the worthless wars and the whores in conservative media, whether radio, TV, podcast, online, everywhere, making bank on tearing the citizens of the country apart, and the politicians who ride that hatred hard, like it's the fastest horse at the Derby. Without her, so much might have been different. Or maybe they would have at least found someone else to drag around and exploit.  

Jesus, she thinks, at least Giuliani has become such a disgrace that no one dares to try to redefine him as some kind of benevolent, elderly statesman whose dignity is missed in false comparison to the indecent mongrels leading the nation now. And it almost makes her giggle to think of Giuliani contemplating that it is, in fact, a Muslim mayor who will lead New York City through this day, a Muslim man who is genuinely beloved and admired and who, it seems, has no interest in watching 9/11 dance.

But dance she must, even if it's only every fifth year. 9/11 has aged in the last quarter century, "but who hasn't?" she thinks. She knows her responsibilities. It moves her deeply that she is the first world event that impacted the lives of many who were children when she was forced into her current existence in fire and blood. 9/11 wishes, oh, she wishes that it wasn't the case, that she was just another day. 

She checks herself out, her dark but not black dress still fitting, the slit not quite as high up on her thigh, but open enough to let her move. She can't stare too long or she'll burst into tears. She thinks about bin Laden, how he knew that they would torture and parade her and use her as an excuse for every destructive impulse they ever had. She think that it's laughably tragic that he understood the United States better than most Americans.  

She's ready. Reluctant but ready. 9/11 is tired of the ritual of dancing so everyone can behold her and honor her and condemn her and mourn for her and mock her and more. She'll do it because she has no choice. For her, for 9/11, for the country where she lives, for the endless manufactured crises that may not be in her name directly but have their origin in her, it will never stop being 9/11. 

A Poem for the Laborers

"From 'Be Recorder'"

by Carmen Gimenez

they work their fingers 

to the soul their bones 

to their marrow 

they toil in blankness 

inside the dead yellow 

rectangle of warehouse 

windows work fingers 

to knots of fires  

the young the ancients

the boneless the broken

the warehouse does too 

to the bone of the good 

bones of the building

every splinter spoken for

she works to the centrifuge 

of time the calendar a thorn 

into the sole dollar of working 

without pause work their mortal 

coils into frayed threads until 

just tatter they worked their bones 

to the soul until there was no 

soul left to send worked until 

they were dead gone

to heaven or back home 

for the dream to have USA 

without USA to export

USA to the parts under 

the leather sole of the boss 

they work in dreams of working 

under less than ideal conditions 

instead of just not ideal 

conditions work for the 

shrinking pension and never 

dental for the illusion 

of the doctor medicating them 

for work-related disease 

until they die leaving no empire

only more dreams that their babies

should work less who instead

work more for less 

so they continue to work 

for them and their kin 

they workballoon payment 

in the form of a heart attack 

if only that’ll be me someday

the hopeless worker said on 

the thirteenth of never 

hollering into the canyon 

of perpetual time 

four bankruptcies later

three-fifths into a life 

that she had planned 

on expecting happiness 

in any form it took 

excluding the knock-off

cubed life she lived in debt

working to the millionth

of the cent her body cost

the machine’s owner

Yolanda Berta Zoila 

Chavela Lucia Esperanza

Naya Carmela Celia Rocio

once worked here

their work disappearing

into dream-emptied pockets

into the landfill of work

the work to make their bodies

into love for our own