“New Economy” by Joshua Rivkin

“New Economy”

“New Economy”

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A weekly poem, read by the author.
Jan. 17 2012 7:05 AM

“New Economy”

Click the arrow on the audio player to hear Joshua Rivkin read this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes.

A man offers to trade his guitar for a city bus. 
My pick for your passengers. Six strings for sixteen wheels. 

A bride on her wedding day exchanges her love
for bright weather, a groom exchanges his hands for hers. 

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A father offers to trade his family for a hotel’s worth of sleep. 
A sailor offers the Pacific for a hotel’s worth of sex.

Tonight, the shirt from my back, my singing mouth,
my endless praise, for your skin or company.

I’ll give you my stethoscope for a red barn: a doctor. 
I’ll give you my right arm for your left: his patient. 

It’s the inequality of pain a sleepless woman wants
to give away. Here, take mine, she offers to freight trains

whistling their replies through Houston’s poorest wards:
Jealousy gets you jealousy. Rage gets you rage.

"What wouldn’t you offer?" a man asks the pawn shop window.
"What wouldn’t you take?" replies the glass. 

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Joshua Rivkin's poems have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, Southern Review, and elsewere. A former Stegner Fellow, he lives in Los Angeles.