Fear of the Marketplace

American Poetry Review, The, Nov/Dec 2004 by Perillo, Lucia

Money is like sex in this particular American eddy in which we swirl. We post its icons everywhere, yet we do not consider it good form to talk about either subject in specific terms (as in the matter of tampons, our ads will never utilize the fine word blood). As far as cheerleading goes, by my junior year I'd quit, because my "consciousness had been raised," as we said back then, and this activity had come to seem frivolous when so many pages of history were being written and college students were being gunned down by the National Guard on their baseball diamonds. Also in those days it was not good form for cheerleaders to have hair on their legs, and I was letting mine grow in protest of the razor's tyranny.

LUCIA PERILLO'S fourth book of poetry, Luck is Luck, will be published by Random House in 2005.