Hi, it's Major. As I close my time as host of The Slowdown, I'm grateful for the opportunity

I've had to share poetry with you these past few years. The Slowdown has a deep store of

episodes, and for the next few months, we're reaching into the archive to bring you some of our

favorites. Here's one for my time on the show.

I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

Music When they were young, I would ask my children which social cause they wished to donate to.

During Thanksgiving, I gave them the assignment to research a nonprofit they wanted to support.

They decided to donate to our local animal shelter and food bank.

Not that we had extra funds, but it felt important to engender a spirit of giving as a counterbalance to the end of the year emphasis on shopping and spending.

I feared my children as adults would measure their identity and self-worth by the size of their

paycheck and not their heart. Today's poem disentangles the quest for money,

transactional desire, and lyric subjectivity.

Its teasing interplay of language brings into close proximity,

art, social class, and manners of currency.

0.0.00-000-000-0-0-0-0-0-0.

By Aaron Marie Lynch.

I have desired most to be desired.

Last drops of juice squeezed from the lime, husk, and thereafter, gone my givingness.

Oh, handsome men, I'm sick of them. The new girlfriends look like me, or I look like the old girlfriends.

Their fathers sell the missiles, their grandfathers designed.

Drunk on their wine, I slept warm in their past.

Now I'm brought to consideration of trust funds.

...