Prolit

a literary magazine about money, work, & class

The Worst Recession

My people do not have enough
To invest in stock 

That’s how the economy is doing—
Bid, close, exchange, margin 

Within itself, getting haircuts without
Us. In debt before and after recessions, 

Which recession, one’d ask, which recession
I’d ask, does one want to know about— 

My genes juggle, each hand shares a story
Of sharecroppers, not shareholders knowing 

The share market. I know it’s not share
And share alike. New York 

Times details the next recession
On the front page 

With intangible stock symbols,
Sectors and short selling 

And this recession, its op-ed notes,
Will be the worst recession. 

No one notes it would be
The forty-eighth.


Prince Bush

Prince Bush is a poet in Nashville TN with poetry in *82 Review, Cotton Xenomorph, Ghost City Press, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Pleiades: Literature in Context, SOFTBLOW, and elsewhere. He was a 2019 Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets Fellow.