No Natural Buyers

Fuck the discernment of the discerning.
Buy-and-hold investors want yield
and duration. Everyone earning
anything needs near-term cash.
Dad keeps a box of obsolete wires
in what he calls a “strategic reserve.”
There are no natural buyers
in the belly of the curve.

Summer will keep happening
without you. The listed ingredients
are far from the only thing
in protein power: think ground-up bugs.
You’ll want to adjust your Bayesian priors
when you run out of water to conserve.
There are no natural buyers
in the belly of the curve.

Contemplation here I come.
Infinite swarms of fleeting forms,
and beings, and pangs. I need some
more comfortable zazen pants
or an antique pair of pliers
to pinch the Buddha nerve.
There are no natural buyers
in the belly of the curve.

If you live intentionally, you win.
Spring will go on without you.
The cliché was open, so I walked in.
A tariff on washing machines
also increases the price of dryers.
My shame goes where it deserves.
There are no natural buyers
in the belly of the curve.

You will never find an empty place
in the great chain of being.
The only way you can ever disgrace
the profession is underperformance.
I gathered all the recent hires
and asked them to observe:
there are no natural buyers
in the belly of the curve.

This deal is the deal I chose.
I wanted to go to more parties
where I’m a person that everyone knows
and thinks is really smart.
Rapid lateral force splits tires
when deer jump out and make you swerve.
There are no natural buyers
in the belly of the curve.

Belief conduces to certain effects.
Have you heard my voice in your house?
‘cuz I can hear when you read the Analects
out loud to your wife to put her to sleep.
I used to have a habit of ripping fliers
that local archivists sought to preserve.
There are no natural buyers
in the belly of the curve.

Experts fear it could be worse
than sunglare off a hawk’s belly.
I would have wished for the reverse
if I had managed to complete the ceremony.
The shy one continues to light the fire
and she my heart does serve.
There are no natural buyers
in the belly of the curve.

The only way this earth is real
is as a symbol of the heavenly realm.
The optics suck. I thought I could deal
with your relentless use of data.
Bad recordings of the castrati choir
retain their ability to unnerve.
There are no natural buyers
in the belly of the curve.

Meet me at the summoning place
and at the proper time of calling.
He never had anything in his briefcase
except for the softcore magazines
he must be the only one buying. He retired
to focus on being the neighborhood perv.
There are no natural buyers
in the belly of the curve.

Know what your skin cells want.
Know the intent of the universe.
If you bring your own tongs
you can skip the buffet line.
Your job at any gala is to acquire
a full array of hors d'oeuvres.
There are no natural buyers
in the belly of the curve.

Some day, some happy day
my trials will fewer be, some day,
some day, some day, some
happy day, from sin set free.
I think our hostess is a liar.
She told me all those empty tables are reserved.
There are no natural buyers
in the belly of the curve.

Brendan White is the author of nine pamphlets of poems, most recently No Natural Buyers and Work on Perceiving More Clearly. His poems have appeared online at nonsite, Prelude, Blazing Stadium, and Chicago Review. He currently serves as the Debt Manager of the City of Chicago, where he has worked since 2017, and he was named a 2025 Rising Star by The Bond Buyer, a daily newspaper dedicated to the municipal finance industry.