The life cycle (Nova Scotia) & A guide to breaking the banking industry
by Jacob McArthur Mooney
[ poetry - august 06 ]
Life cycle (Nova Scotia)
1.
This is our postcard season.
I go down to the dikes
with a scalpel, and
slice off a simple red:
browning, inexpensive.
2.
The ocean severs,
cuts blue across the province,
folds itself up and
beaches on the rocks
between the Basin and
the Bay.
The
inlets fill
with freezing, open
for the pack-ice like
wind-chilled February basements,
swollen and ready for
the leak.
3.
Spring:
as the absence of spring. Calendar pictorials
with no hint or hue of truth. Spring consists
of fifty frozen mornings, then
falls and skins its knee, the blood
running into
4.
fish
season. The
bilinguals call it summer or,
also, somme de mer. Fish like
molten rock, streaming through
the farsightedness of forests. Fish stuck
on the rocks, in the back of
your throat like
a toothpick,
brittle,
sharp, unrepentant, dry.
A guide to breaking the banking industry
They only keep a fifth
of their money in the vault at a time. What it means is this:
If you can convince one
quarter of the town to withdraw their whole accounts on
the same morning, they’ll
run out. Make sure you’re next in line when this happens.
Say this; Don’t have my
three hundred dollars, eh? Well, those sure are some good
lookin’ shoes. The next
guy steps up and buys out all the cameras, which is about
to be important, because
by ten there’s no cars left in the driveway. As of eleven thirty
the building’s mortgaged out
to a conglomerate from Elm Street. The manager agrees to
indentured servitude with
the Cleanliness Patrol in the park. Present this story to
a banker at a restaurant, when
he pretends not to be bothered, ask Who’s paying for
the cheque, me or you?
