When it comes to comprehending numbers, don't listen to the poets - if they understood basic math, they wouldn't be poets. Listen to the accountants, instead. A poet will sing how 13 is an unlucky number (no feat of the imagination there). She may even pull out her license and irrationally rhyme how some numbers are unethical. As if ethics applies to math and money. An accountant will cogently observe that no matter what 13 may be it is not a big number. 17 is bigger - though still not big. 27, 32, 50, and 59 are big but no bigger than a modest PR problem. 13 does not make a synagogue a concentration camp. Especially when 13 is actually 12 because the killer was 1. The accountant will clarify that 12 is much smaller than billions. The poet will protest: billions is the sound of outdoor concerts becoming killing fields and classrooms becoming slaughterhouses. Poets call those children and concertgoers blood diamonds. An accountant now concerned about the bottom line will counter that "blood diamonds" is a misleading and malicious metaphor manufactured by malcontent poets to cynically incite the sympathies of simpletons. There hasn't been a market for blood diamonds in years. So children and concertgoers are not blood diamonds. They aren't even innocent bystanders - because they were terrified, when the shooting started, and tried to run away. If you must name them, the accountant will conclude that the children and concertgoers were coal ash or feathers or other unavoidable byproducts of businesses worth billions. What, the accountant would like to know, is a poem worth? Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief First published in The Broadkill Review
Love your style.
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A strong and moving poem.
Gwen.
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Thanks very much.
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