Written for a poetry class

Real GDP

Denomination is domination.

Sacajawea in her gilded cage
might be a match for Washington;
but til she’s tied up in a burlap sack
with 99 of her sisters,
she’s nothing next to Franklin’s
wry-lipped rictus.
The whole tribe a spectacle
of smooth golden edges
and heft beyond metaphor,
something real and tangible,
like long-lost artifacts of a time
when debt was a lightness
and even Providence had its burdens.

Your green-tinged want and need
to get your paper stacks in order?
Give me the sun-bright shine
of the Shoshone’s copper body,
her heavy admonition that
wages have a weight
statements cannot say
and pure numbers somehow lack.

Unlike Roman soldiers
and Venetian porters,
we put flax into our wallets,
blissfully unaware.
They knew, as we don’t:
when the arrows come down,
you can’t afford to carry;
when the boat turns over,
good fortune isn’t.