The Literary Review

As I sit sore-assed

amidst scattered receipts,

crumpled papers scrawled

with mistaken numbers,

a hand calculator

and a cup of peppermint tea,

the 1040 stares back

grinning

in its blue-white-over-lined

good-for-nothing face.

I have spent days juggling papers

to the patriotic rhythms

of the tax-book’s fluid verse,

tossing sums into the air,

fingers grasping futilely for cents in the dollar,

for money,

money wrested from these very fingertips

by bureaucrats and gas-bag politicians

avid for cash

avid for power

avid for my money.

I ponder.

I fume.

The 1040 sits there

grinning

in its blue-white-over-lined

good-for-nothing face.

I stare.

I fume.

I grin.

I shout “Eureka!”

and run smiling

to my bathtub for a half-hour soak

agog about the big lie

that causes us to fume and to hate

as the 1040s sit there

grinning

in their blue-white-over-lined

good-for-nothing faces.

That money I fumed over?

It was never really mine.

Sure, the company said it was,

but

I never saw it,

I never felt its green crackles

I never had it to spend on leather-bound tomes

filled with verses to the 1040,

or on devotional offerings for my company

that would never lie

or even make a teensy weensy mistake.

My tax dollars

never mine

given by my employer

purchase police

protect freedom

protect the American way of life

protect the 1040 sitting there

chortling at the lie

that is its essence,

grinning wildly

in its blue-white-over-lined

good-for-nothing face.

As I sit in the cooling water

my face reddens with anger

at days spent sifting antique receipts,

pondering the dusty verses of arcane mystics

(the loremasters of the riant I.R.S.)

pounding my calculator with tingling fingers

for a few-score pennies,

pounding the myth that the pennies had ever been mine

into my head with my own worn fingers—

myths that lead us to support corporate lobbyists

in their fairy-tale stiff-upper-lip tough-love

its-us-or-them utter cruelty,

as they turn the sick onto the streets,

lay off thousands of teachers and social workers,

transform foodstamps for the RIFfed into tax cuts for them,

starve us ’til we’ll scab on striking nuns

for a few crumbs

of holy wafers

blesséd by men in wealthy robing

who fired the nuns for thoughts of utter

blasphemy—

like loving the poor

or seeing that taxes don’t come from the pockets of workers

but from the corporations,

that taxes go from their private pockets

to their public pockets.

But both pockets bankroll

the hatred

and mystic palaver

that fills the airways

and feed the grin on the legend

that is the 1040

in its blue-white-over-lined

good-for-nothing face.

But as I storm from my soap-filled bathtub

and storm naked into the street shouting my anger,

I grin again,

recalling that freedom comes from just such anger,

from the aching hearts

and loving-hating minds

of workers enraged,

of workers scattering myths

with grins on our faces—

on our black-white-brown-yellow-and-red

creaséd-twisted-and-lined

good-for-nothing

full-of-hope

full-of-anger

creaséd-twisted-and-lined

faces

as we join the fired nuns

on a picket line of millions

to destroy the lying system

and the 1040 that embodies it

with its blue-white-over-lined

good-for-nothing face.