Spare by Kate Lindroos

You can buy a Roman coin for four dollars actually a dollar ninety-five plus two dollars shipping which means that it costs more to ship the Roman coin than the coin is worth which means the three day shipment from Toledo to Boston is more valuable than the shipment from Rome to Toledo which took 1500 years, you could say the coin now is the opposite of money, its face worn such that should you clean it there would be nothing there underneath, no face, and money always needs a type of face, arguably the coin looks better when left caked in the hardened accumulation of years, though this accumulation may be false, though most seeking to buy wish to remove this as to judge clearly the merit of artifact, though such actions serve only to sever the item from the origin being judged so as to force then a certain imagining, anyway the reviews say don't bother you can't see the face, the reviews say I love it I feel connected to the past, the reviews say don't trust the seller, they ask if it comes with the slip that verifies it is true, a slip that in lieu of hardened dirt and other accumulations will prove the passage of time with authority not questioned nor named, and with this the value is placed elsewhere yet again, so that you are not sure what value is besides an idea, an idea related to the possibility of the coin’s second forging, which is almost more impressive than the first, this process by which we satisfy our desires with falsehood, by which all dirt can somehow look the same as its presence is both an elemental wish and sanction *Covering an Amazon listing

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Kate Lindroos lives in the foothills of the Berkshires. Recent poems appear in jubilat, Sixth Finch, Barrow Street, Permafrost, and Big Big Wednesday.