After Reading the Forbes Billionaire List
by Natalia Prusinska
If money, still warm from your hands, leaned her forehead on yours and asked, Do you
love me, would you gently move her aside, grab your clothes from the chair, and leave as
she watches in silence, biting her lip into a perforated edge? Or would you grumble,
Don’t fuckin’ start, and make her invite her friends over for the boys? Or maybe, without
any explanation, you’d take her to the 7-11 up the road and trade her for a Coke and a
Bic. Or maybe, just maybe, would you place your hands on her head, gentle-like, one
thumb on either temple, and say, Yes, smiling down at her piled on the kitchen stool like
laundry? So much to love, you’d think, studying her holographic hair in the half-light,
and in a sort of inspiration, you’d lean over and grab a permanent marker from the
drawer and write across her face, VOID, so no one, not even you, can ever use her again.
Natalia Prusinska is a Polish-American, queer poet and author of the chapbook, Hard Jolts of Hope (2021). Her work has been featured in Storm Cellar, High Shelf Press, and elsewhere. She lives with her partner in Los Angeles.