“Government Spending,” a Poem by Patricia Lockwood

The government spent a Patricia on me,
“a huge waste,” it lamented, “when we could
have been spending it on another Nixon,”

the government spent all its beauty
on the great light leap on the deer-
crossing sign — there was hardly any
beauty left for anything else in America,
and looking around them the government
said,
“Is there none left? Print more,”

you are born, you barely contain yourself,
you grow, inside you, someone spends
a billion to make prison more luxurious;
inside you, someone spends a billion
to keep libraries open one hour later;
then oh god, you feel wonderful,
you must be on welfare,

The rest of the poem, published in Poetry’s December issue, is up at the Poetry Foundation. Lockwood’s (subscriber-only, why?!) “What is the Zoo for What” at the New Yorker is also terrific, and of course, there’s the devastating “Rape Joke.”