SPROUT FOSTER-GOODRICH AKA KFG

YOUR JOB DOESN'T LOVE YOU - A GOLDEN SHOVEL OF "PROLETARIAT BLUES" BY BLUE SCHOLARS

Monday morning radio pangs in rush hour traffic It

jingles the daily cycle like a key ring Seems

the sun is rolling faster than our wheels We

faceplant pink mountains and forward Never

seen the Promised jugs beyond the cleave but we’ll get

front row if we wait in our seat In line to be (re) paid

Nostalgia Greatest Hits jakebrakes awakeness! Dreams for

Adolescent boredom? A tropical retirement? What

Of todaynowthis? ////// We could all quit our

jobs right now swing open doors leave our cars in labor

Comrades! Let us butterfly out of traffic by our middle fingers! Is

Dolly really urging for the grind or to unionize? Worth

Lies innately as this range but is washed down shower drain It’s

been rationed and handed back to us just as often

As productivity is counted up As many ways you’ve been told why

“the company can’t emotionally afford to give you a raise” We

could ditch our cars under this rusting sun No show no call-in

And what would keepers of the gates do to us? A)

Hire a horse to replace you B) Continue their loyal daze

Upon the trap door perched atop their ladder waiting on

Orders from Olympus or to become a god I’d rather the

Growth plunge deep and horizontal This way

To the hills of sloshy footholds! Worry not for it’s honest-to-

Human to weave the line head plucked empty of dreams for Work.

SPROUT FOSTER-GOODRICH (AKA KFG) is a Pisces potpourri of queerness from the Great Lake State. Trans, nonbinary, CPTSD survivor, hypoglycemic. An award-winning writer, nationwide-touring performer, and cartoon character. A former slammaster, coach, and repeated team member of the award-winning Retort United slam team, teaching artist of youth poetry non-profit, The Diatribe, and founder of the environmental justice poetry education program, in collaboration with the Lower Grand River Organization of Watersheds, “We Are Water.” They have spoken and performed at universities, venues, and protests across the country, including the NODAPL protest at Standing Rock. Their ever-evolving art and community work centralizes individual and collective healing in conversation with social issues. Sprout deep-dives internal dialogue, investigating mental illness and trauma by our relationship to cis-heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. Being a former musical theatre kid, their animated performance and humor grants levity and alternative perspective to often-heavy topics. KFG has been a member of three Winter Tangerine cohorts, including their retreat at Poet’s House Library in New York City, published by literary journals, including (but not limited to) Mikrokosmos Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Reality Beach, Crabfat Review, and Split This Rock, and was a finalist for the Sonia Sanchez Langston Hughes Poetry Prize in 2019. Their videos are featured on Write About Now and forthcoming on Button Poetry, they have self-published two chapbooks, The Year of The Bee and Somatic, As In, Sonar, and they are currently working on another. Most recently, Sprout won the Write About Now Head-to-Head Slam against some of their poetic heroes, moved across the country to Denver with their cat Ham, and has taken to writing trans sci-fi erotica.