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  • King Stuff
  • Matthew Lippman (bio)

When I turn forty-nine I will turn fifty.I will have a decade plus one yearto make a million dollars.I am not joking about this.I want to go to Barcelona with my childrenand dance flamenco on the Spanish Stepsthen come home and have three plumbersfix up the upstairs bathroom with butterflies and nightingales.I want to introduce myself to a side of myself that I have never met.The millionaire.If you visualize something does that make it come true?It’s so beautifully, what,Buddhist? New Age?I hear people say it all the time—visualize itand it will happen.I tried.I saw myself as an ogre under a bridge in Manhattanand I was that ogre,but only kinda.I was more kinda too kindat the end of the day and the ogre project failed.Once, I visualized myself as Willie Maysbut I could never get black enoughor enough from Westfield, Alabama,with a mitt on my right handfor any of it to, you know,feel correct.Every night I go to sleep and see stacks of money that smell exactly like moneyin my living room.I see a chair from Crate and Barrel on top of those stacksand there I am with a crown, and a white robe with the fur collar,the king of my millions. King Stuff.I look at me and I look gross.It’s so much easier to see myself as gross and be grossthan to be a king on a stack of money in the living roomwhile the kids play with matches and light the whole thing on fire. [End Page 67] Most days I open up my eyes and start to sing.My daughters taught me that.My wife too.Most days we get out of bed and croon aboutthe millions of bottles of dollars on the wall,while we hold hands and fall over the furniturelaughing our asses off. [End Page 68]

Matthew Lippman

Matthew Lippman’s three poetry collections are American Chew (Burnside Review Press, 2013), winner of the Burnside Review Book Prize; Monkey Bars (Typecast Publishing, 2010); and The New Year of Yellow (Sarabande Books, 2007), winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize. He is the recipient of the 2014 Georgetown Review Magazine Prize and the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review.

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