It has & always will be
 
        a hundred-dollar bill      Yes,
 
             this is the instrument of cultured grief:
 
     faded paper       snot-reeked and spun
 
into the shape of a pen cap –
 
        now observe the undercurrent,
 
            that violent grip of warmth barreling
 
      their bodies into silence & also
 
those beached whales sputtering up
 
       around me      pleading
 
        for one more wave & I know
 
     what you’re thinking;
 
what is glamorous about
 
        a room pregnant
 
          with people sinking
 
     into the floorboards, thinking themselves
 
as joyful as a school of parrotfish?
 
     I can tell you this:
 
         when the tide breaks, the body
 
     glistens & begs      to be beaten again
 
with salt. The salt tastes      richer
 
     the second time around. I can tell you
 
         when I found myself midocean
 
     with a wad of a washed-out hundred
 
crushed between my thumbs I could not weep.
 
     There was so much music in that dark.
 
         I heard my mother sing & for the first time
 
     since her absence, I laughed. It was,
 
of course, at nothing. The room full of
 
       drug-thirst dripping at the seams.
 
        It was, of course,    not my money.
 
       I was penniless and craving something
 
still     I cannot tell you I will ever find.