For once, I throw in my lot with the rest.
At the bleak store that sells tobacco and liquor,
two bucks buys me this slip that feels sinful and
foolish in my hands. What if it isn’t money I want,
but connection? This is what passes for community,
at least, the whole of us on our screens, pinning
our hopes on a machine that does not care what
banal, what charitable things we are dreaming of.

Tonight, the machine hands down its prophecy
like an Oracle that requires no Pythia,
no Castalian Spring, no priests, for who is not
an expert now, truth at his beck and call?
You are fated to lose, it says; we sigh, smirk, or cry,
aware the pot has grown larger, the odds
still laughable. How many will try again?

I think of America’s boundless wealth, ill-gotten
or hard-earned, locked in a handful of vaults,
how the safe-doors buckle but never bend.
In 2025, what is more democratic than the lottery,
its prize the sum of our bets on the future?
What is more lonely and heartbreaking?