Love and Money by Alan Dugan

Love and Money

The United States of America is like a convention

of the International Baton Twirlers Association

in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, during a steelworkers’ strike

when I went there once as a bill collector.

The locked-out mill-workers on the street corners

stared at the nearly bare-assed middle-class girls

dressed in nothing but expensive glittery rags

with a dirty gray lust for money and cunt,

but they didn’t touch the girls or the mills

because they weren’t theirs. Right and wrong.

The girls weren’t theirs but the mills were theirs

because they built them, ran them, and made

everything in them except the money: it went away

to where the girls were, so they stood around

without the money and watched the girls.

Therefore I took the money and flew

back to New York to tell the liberal conservatives

that the republican democrats are right:

There is no left-wing politics in America left.

There is the International Baton Twirlers Association.