Economics: The Language of Kings

By Anna Costello, Art by Nerissa Chin

patience: a woman

in a starched pantsuit, eating a sandwich

on an edge of curb. lips salty, swollen and 

triumphant. grey-silver spreads wings from her face — 

those other lives kick up dirt and smoke 

but her waiting is brave work. 

strong labor, heaving dunlap 

potato sacks in summer sun, 

balancing individual water drops —

feminine work, to get old slowly. 

she makes Time, she is the mother

and baby in the river and Holy Spirit. 

she’s had a thousand miscarriages –

seconds mutated into ischemic strokes. 

she is an immigrant, enters silently into lives, 

well-adjusted to blurry voices, lights. 

her colleagues live by Hobbes 

and know only half of human nature. 

patience: what kind of conquest raises a child?

her gaze is loose and comfortable, 

the eye resting easily in its socket; 

she vibrates at low frequency, 

constant hum of recognition. 

she is ancient radio waves, crackling and wise

except for her skin – soft tears 

of a younger, tired woman gather in crevices. 

she lets roaring car-wind 

dry the whites of her eyes.

an impulsive attraction to chemical death 

sweeps her dreams, bundled in linen 

on a long stream of asphalt

dragging trail of rainbowed gasoline.

something still to learn from the thick stench of progress – 

it leaves no room for living.