#BreadAndCircuses
Come click my headlines. Hurry, quick!
This time it’s urgent. Though you’re sick
of #problems, you’ll still stare.
I profit. I don’t really care.
Repeat the things you’ve done before—
get angry, but do nothing. Your
quick, tiny fit will fit inside
your swelling noble righteous pride.
You’ll post a comment, maybe two,
and that will be enough for you.
You’ll sit complacent. You’ll await
the next #whatevergate—
content with content I produce
to mollify, to make occluse—
an opiate, another hit,
for masses who just scroll and sit
and suffer. As you hit my page,
I monetize your fleeting rage.
Your data tells me all. I know
just how to leverage SEO.
And when your interest fades, I’m there
to orchestrate a new affair—
my algorithms automate
the topic of the next debate.
I win because you fail to see
your cycle move predictably.
I quite enjoy my life of ease.
Enable me. Do nothing. Please.
Though I may screech at each disaster,
lol #ally? I’m your master.
Matthew Moniz has poems appearing in The Iowa Review, Notre Dame Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Grist, American Literary Review, and many others. His work has been awarded Poetry by the Sea’s Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Crown Contest prize and the SCMLA Poetry Prize. You can read some of this other poems on Bluesky @MattMonizPoet.
Read more Letters to America in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance and Democracy, published by Trinity University Press in collaboration with Terrain.org.
Header photo by badahos, courtesy Shutterstock.
