Don't Like Rich People
A girl says, “I have a thing against rich people.”
She’s not talking to me but I lean a little closer
because the conversation sounds promising
and then she says, “and I have a thing against
poor people, you know the ones who don’t read.”
She titters, making a sound like a tin warehouse
door, the way it rattles after it’s slammed shut,
or the way silverware sounds slipped from
the dining room table onto a tile floor.
It’s funny, after all, the callous rich, the illiterate poor.
“I’m just kind of anti-humanity right now,” she continues
the girl destined to become one and not
the other.
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Georgetown Boys
Visiting a friend in DC
we go down to a bar in Georgetown
to see a few of his friends from high-school.
Walking among the crowd of Georgetown boys
in soft pastels, button-downs and polos
alligators snapping hungrily above their left nipples
I’m not sure it would surprise me
if I were to find out they were all born
from the same mother,
a single extraordinarily productive attractive
and sexually-active creature.
I imagine if this were the case
the men wouldn’t call her a “whore”
they would say “childgiving professional”
or “humanity purveyor,” or something like that.
I move through the crowd observing
and mingling with America’s elite
its favorite sons, these Georgetown boys
hair sheared short as sheep.
In twenty years they’ll wear only slight variations
of these freshly-scrubbed faces
and their big houses will be exchanged
for other, equally big houses
maybe the TVs will be wider
with clearer picture than the ones they have now
or the kitchens shinier.
Their pretty mothers will be replaced
by equally-pretty wives
and the crystal of scotch will never be
very far away.
I rub shoulders with them
feeling oddly distinct, almost regal
in my brown skin and five o’clock shadow
the royal blue-and-gold Brooklyn baseball cap
bought in a small clothing store on Flatbush Avenue
sitting atop my head, a crooked crown.
Jammed up in the crush against the bar
I attempt conversation with a kid
in creamsicle-colored polo and shorn curls.
But immediately I feel him tense
hear the words
who is this guy
as he tries to ebb away
into one of the many tributaries in the crowd.
I repeat the words aloud
who is this guy.
An excellent question and one
I’m not sure I can answer presently
to either of our satisfactions.
But there’s pleasure
that he won’t be able
to answer it either.
Alex Gallo-Brown studies creative writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He is simultaneously at work on a poker memoir and trying to quit gambling.
