Prolit

a literary magazine about money, work, & class

how many people do we talk to in a day?


is a question you could ask just like you could ask


why the new employee abruptly quit today and how


upon hearing this news you were overwhelmed with the inescapable question


is my job a scam? and I the victim? which if I were a comedian I would


run with as a bit but sadly I am a poet so instead I wondered


how many people do we talk to in a day? surely


a measure of more urgency than inverted yield curves


I'm no economist but my contribution to the field should be as such—


the stock market's performance is inversely related to how many people we talk to in


               a day


stocks are high! friendship is low


of course I am wrong and


despair has been driving revenues since before despair invented the steam engine


in the economics of the future we will study


the effects of job security on the conditional probabilities


of gestures such as abruptly quitting one's job


I ask myself do my co-workers go home asking


how many people did I talk to today?


over and over I tell them


this carpet can be torn off the floor no problem it wasn’t made to stay


macroeconomic maxim #3


when interest rates cannot be lowered any further


the only way firms can stimulate consumer activity is by


telling their employees “the world is burning around us all we have is each other”


listen I’ve figured out why the new employee’s abrupt self-termination was so disturbing


the curtain peeled back on the most miraculous achievement of humankind


that people get up and go to work


by now you know the refrain


the markets open up and the weeks weaken


the weekends!


you see the poem started in the register of melancholy but


I am tired of the register of melancholy I am tired of the register of


guilt I am tired of any of you not being able to answer the question


how many people do we talk to in a day? I see it in


you you see it in me that we go home


Heartache Medication


and here I go again I’m
                                         drinking one I’m drinking
                                                                                    two except it’s 3:00 in the
afternoon and no beer in Stalinist
                                                   Russia where they’ve also run out of
                                                                                                                Modalert so suck it up
Green Gartside, medicinal citation cypher
                                                                        cute chimney sweep turned saccharine
                                                                                                                                            concern clerk
first the feet start to sweat
                                                then your ass and image search
                                                                                                     Jon Pardi sounds like his face
which is medicine for only 3:02
                                                        in yeehaw agenda but no cowboys
                                                                                                                cattle driving me out the
parking lot adjacent to the causeway
                                                              which you’ve heard is the most expensive
                                                                                                                             road (was it in the
nation? the world?) superlatives
                                                are slippery and trivia is only
                                                                                                    fun when it’s like,
this road used to be underwater
                                                       it’s not right now obviously,
                                                                                                                obviously the delta will fuck
us up soon enough, though. Will it be Davis or
                                                                     Dixon which is just down the road
                                                                                                                where Jon Pardi’s baby face
was a baby, actually
                                as obvious or inobvious as concrete
                                                                                                    on its belly and pushed through mud
or as geometric fields of alfalfa or
                                           the phrase ‘neotraditional country’
                                                                                                           or how the office shakes when
the CFNR barrels by and in its wake
                                                       someone blasting Steely Dan “Peg,
                                                                                                              it will come back to you" yet
it’s only 3:14!
                        and I am
                                          getting paid.


Joni F-G

Joni F-G is a queer poet who lives in the Sacramento Valley. They work in an office for the University of California. Their poems have previously appeared on Paintbucket.page.