I learned how to build a spreadsheet
Last week. Grandma asked me,
Why won’t they let me write? I guess
They think I’m smart. I don’t tell her that
I’m afraid of “formulas.”

I’m stimulating
A space bar to “appear online”
There’s nothing for me to do

80 years ago my daddy’s daddy’s daddy lived
In his car, selling chicken
(Out a cast iron skillet)
So good it started a chain
His son wrote him a letter
Addressed to his first name
And asked for a raise

Once my daddy’s daddy
Milked his liver too long
It was my daddy’s turn

Until the thick of recession
14 months before Sandy took the nation
Irene took out my capitol's power
And the last sips of capital
From the chicken chain
Just cuz there was no power didn’t
Mean daddy didn’t have to make a living:
Enter a buddy’s smoker
In the parking lot
Making a prophecy
Of the big skillet-shaped marquis
Reading an Obama-era dog whistle:
SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM

We sat in lawn chairs on
Hot concrete next to the highway
Putting cash in a metal box
Til the police came

Now I please the men who hired me
Sharing my daddy’s daddy’s daddy’s
Entrepreneurial bones
And chiding them when they don’t
Put fried chicken on their plates
At the potluck
On 59th and Park. They feign relations
With a bucket from Kentucky
Telling me their mentor’s mentor’s mentor
Made it
60 years ago—
Daddy’s daddy’s daddy rolls over
In hell,
I keep asking for something to do

Peyton Guthrie is a Pisces, writer, creative consultant, and cat mother. Her poems and essays are in the company of collaborators like McNally Jackson, FROGMAG, shelfMAG, and whatever Bushwick bars will hand her a mic. She is southern bones living in Ridgewood, Queens, by way of Richmond, Virginia.

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