Vocabulary
Robbie Gamble
Well, there’s well-off, well-got, well-fixed,
well-heeled, well-breeched, and well-to-do.
There’s flushed, posh, loaded, upscale,
affluent, prosperous, filthy stinkin’ rich.
Try highbrow, high rent, high hat, high caste,
high flyer, high roller, high stepper, living high,
high falutin’, high on the hog and High Cockalorum.
Or take on fat cat, fat cull, fat goose, even fatwad.
Perchance a dilettante, muckety-muck, moneybags,
boozhie, blueblood, or bigwig? Consider uppercrust,
uptown, uppish, uppertendom. Possibly tip-top,
top row, top shelf, top table, top-of-the-tree.
Go for Rolling Joe, rolling in it, having it all,
having it made, having money (known as:)
cold cash, toadskin, green backs, gravy,
lettuce, lucre, moolah, boodle, wampum,
coinage, wherewithal, capital, mazuma,
simoleons, bread and butter, gilt, and silver.
Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, born
into the purple, born on third base, and of course
to the manner born (as a:) trust fund baby, heir, issue,
scion, Brahmin, beneficiary, trustafarian, aristocrat.
We are moneyed, made of money, in the money,
playing blithely with our house money since
I didn’t have to work for it at all.
An earlier version of “Vocabulary” was published in Lily Poetry Review. I’m a trust fund baby, and I’ve been trying to write about my experience of the injustice of privilege and how it can distort human relationships. This can be a rather stodgy subject for poetry, and “Vocabulary” was a bit of a breakthrough in that I found a way to lighten the discourse through wordplay.

ROBBIE GAMBLE is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). He is poetry editor at Solstice Literary Magazine. robbiegamble.com
