Capitalism

It’s essentially cleaner to be

corrupt and rich than it is

to be innocent and poor.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

Poverty is an

entirely human thing.

Aardvarks have

no ghettos. Foxes

wear no rags.

A den is a den is a den.

Being a realtor

would be murder.

The cheetah doesn’t

need a Lamborghini.

The porcupines

have balked at private

jets. Their needles

are enough. One might even

play a Brahms concerto.

My stylus has a fracture

and I’ve nothing but

the sparrows for my tunes.

Tell me of a whale

who’s unemployed. Food

stamps for the snails.

None of them lack a

home in which to dwell.

And somehow we’re

supreme.

Ostriches? Content

with what they have.

The ground above

their gaze. We assume that

they’re ashamed, or

feigning all is well.

They simply see the

worth of what we won’t.

And then the scorpion—

who knows the shoreline

doesn’t need a

gauche cabana. Show me one

with fingers to the bone, their

knees disfigured spuds,

from scrubbing a

filthy stairwell of its grime,

her brood of famished

kids in some favella,

no Adidas

for plumping feet,

onesies that will fit them

head-to-tail,

which sting you like

the dickens down

in Rio, you in a hammock’s

sway, a straw in your batida,

as though there’s no one

who’s been wailing

beneath your soles.

Andreas Gripp

July 15, 2026

photo: David Levenson / Getty Images