Liam Rector
About the Money

        When they say it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.

                                    — Anon.

 

By the turn of the century

Talking about the money

Replaced talking about the sex,

 

Talking about one’s so-called

Religious life, and all that

Earlier yak about the psyche.

 

Talking about the money

Got down to it and captured

The hunger, the hope,

 

The love and the fear:

Let me hear your money talk,

Many sang.

 

Money was a good time

(What people want most is

Good times and insurance?)

 

And money picked up

The garbage the following

morning. (Someone’s

 

Got to do it and someone gets

Money to do it.) There was

Really nothing like talking

 

About the money if you wanted

To really get to know someone,

To get to know what animated,

 

What moved the American.

Do me. Do it to me, honey.

Do my money. Let’s get cynical:

 

Let me hear your money talk.

 
Found In Volume 34, No. 05
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Liam Rector
About the Author

Liam Rector (1949 - 2007) received an M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and an M.P.A. from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. His books of poems include The Executive Director of the Fallen World (University of Chicago Press, 2006), American Prodigal (1994) and The Sorrow of Architecture (1984).