Low-key Midwest Girl Dad Vibes: My Wardrobe is Mostly Kohl’s Middle-Class Casual & My Skin Care Routine is $1.59 Men’s 2-in-1 Total Body Wash | Bob King
For Izzy
But once a month the soap is on sale for
a-buck-29 so I usually stock up in threes,
& only once it was Buy-One-Get-One
& yes, I still carry regrets that I didn’t
get more. When I think about it, my
college freshman & her friends use
low-key far too often & mostly incorrectly
because OMG, Tiffany, there’s nothing
low-key about having a drink thrown
right in your face. And Oh my god, Becky,
look at her butt has never bounced from
their boom boxes & that’s truly a low-key
tragedy. Most things are BOGO when you
stop & think about it. Nonbiodegradable
blue bags with every supermarket trip
& lingering regret is free with every pint
of Ben & Jerry’s. Cortisol with every cup
of coffee, which is weird because why
would you want to trigger a stress hormone
when you’re low-key trying to destress
from another restless night of sleep
spent overthinking all the things
you cannot control? Bro. That’s
a low-key bummer. With every
Amazon box that is set to arrive
on your front porch also arrives—
at no extra charge—anticipation.
Anticipation of, Did it come yet &
what’s the hold-up & wait this isn’t
the size or color or fit & I better low-key
hide this before a neighbor or loved-one
makes another comment about my
spending habits. Honey, I don’t think
the UPS man thinks about you, your
boxes, or what might be in your boxes
as much as you give him low-key credit for,
so that’s another part of the complex loyalty
rewards program, as if loyalty itself is ever
really rewarded in the noncommercial
sense. You really didn’t buy the house,
your bank did, & when you’re done paying
them back, they’ll pay their bank back, &
that bank will pay its bank, & eventually,
depending on your system of government
& afterlife, someone is paying, plastering
over, creating another layer for a future
archaeological excavation where a future
civilization is going to make wildly
complex & yet-also-incredibly-oversimplified
conclusions from inadequate evidence,
evidence that suggests cave art isn’t
cave art at all, but an early representation
of a stop sign, as in: Proceed no deeper
into the cavern because deeper is where
the bears sleep. Someone is paying
the piper & if not well then you’re gonna
have to hire that injury & malpractice
attorney with the billboards & commercials
all over town, because nothing says I’ll
make them pay like a baldpate & arched
eyebrow. Or as when that French philosopher
said, When you invent the ship, you also invent
the shipwreck; when you invent the plane
you also invent the plane crash; and when
you invent electricity, you invent electrocution.
Every technology carries its own negativity,
which is invented at the same time as technical
progress. Like when you bought the patriarchy,
you not only bought institutional misogyny,
but you also placed men in competition
with each other, perpetual cutthroats,
even as when a grandfather looked at
his adult grandson with an infant in his
arms, diaper bag slung over his shoulder,
drippy-nosed toddler hiding behind
his knee, & questioned what men had
become, just two generations removed
from what he thought stern reticence
could buy. Yes, when you save money
at one store, that enables you really
to splurge on things at other stores,
Girlmath you think, you think as you
cry, standing under the new Lowe’s
showerhead—maybe a Cure song
about boys not crying on the portable
speaker—a low-key power-washer,
epidermis-remover, an extravagance.
But, admittedly, this is only a low-key
understanding of how economics
or emotional intelligence might work.
+Inspired by Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher (2024), On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed (2021), “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-a-Lot (1992), Cave of Bones: A True Story of Discovery, Adventure, and Human Origins by Lee Berger & John Hawks (2023), & “Boys Don’t Cry” by the Cure (1979).
about the author:
Bob King is a professor at Kent State University. His poetry collection And & And came out in August 2024. And/Or is forthcoming in September 2025. New work appears in Stanchion, CrayfishMag, Ink in Thirds, Anti-Heroin Chic, & Ink Sweat & Tears. He lives in Fairview Park, Ohio.