Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

He is about to, I can tell
from how he’s leaning
forward, stick that coin

directly into his mouth
like a mint, round almost,
with a tinge of slime on it,

slightly moist, the sting
of each tiny ridge acidic
between his teeth, thin

as a knife blade quick
to slice his tongue, bitter,
metallic. He wants to eat

it, as the sharp edge of need
pricks the ledges rising
behind his lips, glistening

and wet, ready
to bleed, if necessary, to
ingest as greedily

as fresh cut greens
the stuff of three
thousand fingerprints

sunk there in the cheek
and jaw line of our late
president depicted. If

only he could survive
on trust, entreating
his glands to salivate

wildly, could swallow
in good faith the sweat
and salt in its center,

its sinews solid as red
meat, could wait to reap
the harvests of interest

others have put away
in some bank somewhere,
he might hold off, then,

thankful as Job,
for the love of money.
But this coin’s alloys alone

will kill him, the lint
from dirty pockets
it has nestled in

soon, too soon,
will sicken him,
and the dark dregs

of nickel dust or copper
plating, chiseled by miners
in lost droves once, will

corrode his insides, un-
stick the membranes along
his throat, and suck dry

the lining of his maw, too
eager now, much too eager,
to receive it.

*John Gery is a poet and a critic of modern and contemporary poetry, as well as collaborative translator of poetry. He has taught at the University of Iowa and since 1990 he has served as the founding Director of the Ezra Pound Center for Literature at Brunnenburg, Italy. John's poetry, criticism, and reviews have appeared in literary and academic journals throughout the country, as well as in Europe, including Contemporary Literature, Dark Horse, Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Paris Review, Southwest Review, and Verse. For his work, he has received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1991-92), an Artist Fellowship from the Louisiana Division of the Arts (2002), two Deep South Writers Poetry Awards (1983, 1987), and a European Award of the Circle Franz Kafka in Prague (2000), among other awards. His collection of poems, The Enemies of Leisure, received a Critic's Choice Award from the San Francisco Review of Books.