It Trickles Down
It trickles down like rain through trees,
like jolly germs when bankers sneeze.
The machinations of the rich
control the Market’s bait-and-switch:
a con man’s move, a loser’s niche.
With snake oil in the press release,
fake pie charts and analyses,
payola flows without a hitch.
It trickles down.
Rubes shiver in their BVDs,
foreclosed by Mephistopheles,
who promised cash but gave them kitsch,
who grins and growls, “Life is a bitch.
My friend, there’s been a little glitch.”
Corruption in a den of thieves;
it trickles down.
Janice D. Soderling has published poetry, fiction, and translations in hundreds of print and pixel journals and many anthologies—most recently in Asses of Parnassus and Modern Poetry in Translation. She is included in the forthcoming anthology Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, edited by Grace Bauer and Julie Kane.