Thomas Fink & Maya D. Mason



YOU’RE MORALLY INFERIOR IF


you clomp audibly
on wood floors, you
wear down heels
within four months,

you lust after ordinary
delicacies, a single
window “graces”
your dwelling,

you fail to shower
thoroughly before kissing,
you exceed the one-
pet rule,

you grew large
breasts during early
puberty (or as a middle-
aged male),

you keep
fingernails long—
rendering hands useless,
you shave your head and

don’t have cancer,
you include tax
while calculating tip,
you don’t offer to shovel

your host’s snowy driveway,
you do nothing about
your weak chin,
you woke up today

after I did,
you wear summertime
pants that accent
egregious girth,

your parents bolloxed
your childhood dental
care, you’re 33
and can’t drive,

your cooking commits
olfactory offense,
you know not
who

your parents are, you
buy two of the same
necklace, you’re too
sentimental to kill

a mere mouse.
You reuse
plastic silverware.
You don’t anticipate

my tacit needs.

SUBPRIME MORTGAGE BARGAIN LOT 1 by Thomas Fink

Maya D. Mason is the co-author of Autopsy Turvy (Meritage Press, 2010) and has been published in BlazeVox, ditch, EOAGH, Helios Mss, Marsh Hawk Review, Of(f)course, and Set. She is a graduate student in Painting at New York Academy of Art and most recently had a residency in Mexico City and a three-woman show at Sotheby's Institute in NYC.

Thomas Fink, Professor of English at CUNY-LaGuardia, is the author of 9 books of poetry, most recently Selected Poems & Poetic Series (Marsh Hawk P, 2016), 2 books of criticism, and 3 edited anthologies. His paintings hang in various collections.
 
 
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