iPoems

Marcus Wicker is the author of Maybe the Saddest Thing (2012), selected for the National Poetry Series, and Silencer (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). He was an NAACP Image Award finalist whose other awards include a Ruth Lilly Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. Wicker serves as a visiting professor of English at Michigan State University.

Photograph by Elizabeth Randolph.

In Defense of Ballin’ on a Budget

An iPoem

by Marcus Wicker
Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like. —Will Smith


Damn, Will—they’ve got you sounding mighty
Uncle Phil in these streets. Like the still calling
the Ketel One cheap. How, where we started from
is never done with our undoing. To get the job,
always stay starched, creased to death. Fresher
than the interviewer. Stop acting brand-new

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