Commodity Fetish
Gabby Bess
Issue 14
Poetry
Ann Cvetkovich says to feel your work doesn’t matter is to be dead inside
The specter of middle class values
A spiritual and somatic pain in my lower back
Sitting in a chair was a metaphor
Switching to a standing desk was desperate
Kill the old me
To focus on how to pay rent
By cultivating intimacy with the joke of meritocracy
I almost got arrested that once but stayed in bed
Smoked two cigarettes panicked raged
Pushing that cop’s head into a toilet
A daydream for all the girls
Life is… knowing what it is like
Cops can’t get pussy
666 is chaotic 69
Jail should be in jail
Radical redistribution now!
I should probably drink more water
On the subway, now
Real sleeping through your stop hours
Awake on Adderall thinking about
The young Sri Lankan guy with a vague hedge fund-adjacent job
He said he doesn’t mind taking money from old, rich, white people
I laughed, refrained from saying
I didn’t mind taking money from him
Lacan says things do not work between man and woman
Marx says things do not work between boss and worker
You can feel it
Unfortunately, a feeling is not an end
I’ve been meditating on detaching
The self from labor my body provides
Leaning in to being a commodity fetish
I cry sometimes but my tears track different
My spring
Bounces back