Andrea Lawlor

Position Paper #4: Taxes
by Andrea Lawlor

In the new country the children will read with fascination about money economies when they borrow books from our neighborhood or central libraries which will be open all night every night and all day every day. We immigrants will try not to worry about the children’s games of cash register, which they will play in the great common buildings when there’s rain, scattering handmade tokens in front of the fireplace. We will try not to call them baby capitalists even in jest. We will be so kind to the babies, and we will let them pick out their own clothes from the clothing depots; we will not impose our fashion agendas once they are old enough to point. When they are very young we will dress them in tiny animal costumes, which we will create by sewing ears and tails on earless or tailless garments. The babies will later look at drawings or photographs of themselves and remember in flashes their kittenhoods, lapping milk and sleeping among their littermates in our arms.

Position Paper #5: Property
by Andrea Lawlor

In the new country, we will eschew individual possessive pronouns, preferring to indicate linguistically our shared but not individually-owned belief that all property is probably theft. We won’t have much use for thieving, which will sadden the older among us, with our fond memories of shoplifting cassette tapes from k-mart but which will be nicer for those of us who prefer to pick up the nearest hybrid-style bike and ride it rather than fiddle with u-locks when we are late for our six-monthly appointment at the free dentist, to have our teeth cleaned using non-toxic but very excellent cleaning solutions. Our house will still be “our” house; I haven’t worked out the particulars of housing yet, but I think we’ll just agree that we stay there, temporarily, like all of life.

Andrea Lawlor’s work has appeared in journals such as The Brooklyn Rail, MiPOeasis, OCHO 31, Lambda Literary, and Encyclopedia Volume 2. Lawlor studies and teaches writing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

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