The Southampton Review

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My Merrill

You Bull-Bear, you’ve received new statement(s) here.
Perspectives on recovery and growth,
a candid one-on-one. Support could help
you, could provide a floor. The alphabet—
our infographic snapshot toward your goals. 
You chug along with periodic bouts
of volatility, the shifting tides
of women, juggling emerging stress. 
We’re Merrill—the collective wisdom, put
to work for you. Our insights might inform
you like a secular psychology. 
Please add MyMerrill to your contacts to
ensure that you receive this newsletter:
our messages of episodic care.


Our messages of episodic care 
abate concerns of what you’re worth. There are
some signs you’re nearing empty: ladders fall,
horizon challenges your confidence, 
and how profoundly worry tackles you.
Your mind is in a low-growth world, against
your health. The bearish conversations you
dramatically make magnified within
your head serve only a contrarian
investment in your special Odyssey
of issues. We have optionality
to offer. You are harvesting the clues
from this, the Merrill prophets’ legacy
in email. What is waiting here? What’s found?


In email, what is waiting here, what’s found,
along with our dynamic guidance, is
extraordinary faith in agency.
So let’s begin with some constructive ease:
just read more read more read more, find out more
explore here, listen & subscribe, learn more,
review your statements view enclosures, click,
watch video watch videos, learn how. 
There is a rest of world in which to rest. 
Consider other ways to get outside
yourself and let us bull you toward the light.
Sincerely, Merrill says that these are lows
that lift. For resources, read more, learn more. 
You may not turn euphoric—still, you could.


You may not turn euphoric. Still, you could
find freedom in repatriation first. 
You know you share so much with Merrill, like
the history of Family Wealth and class
performance questions, awkward moments with
your friends, the generous parental boost
and their protectionism. Young Bear, we
maintain the bullish expectation you
will center equity, not scarcity,
within your certain privileged story. No
defensive pose. That you will be of true
fiduciary service is our goal.
With strength and your positioning you can
give love, be loved, and keep your trust in trust.


Give love, be loved, and keep your trust. In trust,
MyMerrill offers up that other bond
between you—that same same desire, to put
it modestly. You are split open by
the women, grabbing, moving synchronized.
One luck about this modern era is
you have no reason to make secret how
you curve—who yields to you their instrument, 
their will, their bond, their wholly good. And vice.
And versa. Look, this key from Merrill passed.
And yet you feel uncertainty as if
your smart, attractive stock is peaking just 
to drop. Believe! We keep you company
along a path that’s been made clear for you.


Along a path that’s been made clear for you,
the stream has changed from glass to spring, its bank
alive with flowers. Nature offers you
a bright annuity. Get out and take
a hike, take space, and take the map of your
behavioral frontier. The hawkish things
and dovish nesters practice homebuilding 
up high. You climb to see, and see that home
is this activity—a seasonal
and cyclical reflation to make firm
your sense of you. Let nature home you up. 
Out here, no bears of burden track you. Your
environment has much to navigate.
Create the signposts, mark them as you go.


Create the signposts. Mark them as you go
through email after email, looking for
your Merrill. What do you decode? The rules
are stress and not and stress and not and stress;
and these affected terms you measure out,
each taken from MyMerrill and made meet. 
Half done, do you need to get sprung, get free?
No, you maintain this tech screen medium,
this changing light revival. Cyber guide
to measure out external answers in
the toughest talk, this Merrill gives you bull
as symbol, bull as escalating strength.
The wise advisor that you seek might live
outside the page of what you can control. 


Outside the page of what you can control,
a fast approaching drop in global health.
The news reports the worst ahead, that it 
can climb your wall of worry. Know that rates
will likely rise. Is this any surprise?
While new in details, we’ve been here before. 
Ask Merrill, ask an elder, for the past
when our community concern of Aid
and health-care was ignored. When medical
solutions break and no health is insured,
believe that risk and life and pains and peace
are newlyweds in you. And there will still 
be parties, be each other. Time to try
a softening away from vigilance.


A softening away from vigilance 
will open room for bigger reasons to
wake up each day. Slow Bull, the overdue
advice is: Get a job! Employment at
a people workplace changes outlook now
and forecasts fundamental positive
expansion. If the most rewarding work
is still the students, steel yourself. Apply,
despite supply-side factors. Your career
could also be as meaningful without
these college inspiration jobs, although
you don’t yet buy it. Maybe analyst
or strategist? Provide a plan revised
from individual: Become a team.


From individual, become a team
in social family couple life, and more. 
Be through with personal competitive 
trends. Bullish woman that you are, you’re not
the only one. The bullish team is us
behind you, women of all ages, of
all decades as foundation, and the curve
of top or bottom, both or neither—roles
in which to see potential you, from which
to graduate. Secure now in your bull,
transform your oversold “She-conomy” of love.
A gender classes overhaul to start
amalgamation of priorities,
leave footprints all together, save your world.


Leave footprints all together. Save your world
against this unexpected x-factor—
contagion. We are talking past the you,
recipient. We’re talking radically
coordinated new relationship
between each being. Some tectonic shifts
are underway. Prepare for capital
to fall. Avoid the face connection; use
your video and audiocast minds
as marriage of both tech and sentiment.
Great Bull are they who share their stores of food
and power, rational with equity. 
MyMerrill recommends a game plan: learn
from shock and fears. Awake you, generous. 


From shock and fears awake, you generous 
emotions broker-dealer, underweight
Olympian. The symbol Bull and Bear
at war in you are coming to a truce.
If this has been an education, may
its lessons be: Resilience won’t protect
you from the threat, but better—it will lift
you up from stumble, set you on the track 
to run, to trip again, the hurdles high.
Alive is like this. Optimistic Bull,
you need not fight the negative in you. 
That part, take it as partner. If you do
it will not pierce you. When the day breaks, shape
with hope this rolling wave of confidence.


With hope, this rolling wave of confidence
arises to split us from you. These months
of searching for the note in newsletter
that then uncovers your specific gold?
Enough. Delete. Retire our help to junk. 
And as you do, project a death on this 
much-needed end. It isn’t us, nor is 
it Merrill coming to a close. By now
it’s fair to say your eye—for deficit
and rules, for format as reliable,
for us as virtually company—
that it made up a getaway from real-
life flux. Your independence calls you back,
it takes you by your sharp part, points you home.


It takes you by your sharp part, points you home,
the flood. Horizon looking weathered now
and rational. This small portfolio
of storms is giving way. And we may just
be robots you’ve invested stories in,
but this was never fraud. We’ve come to know
you. Sensitive, ambitious—you are not 
the first with complex inspiration. Reach
for letter after letter, rally text
and choice without us. When you long for our
internal holdings, ask more risk more, risk
an emphasis. Do not reply. Go strong,
assured, across the current. Signing off 
sincerely. Honest Bull, be safe. Be well.


You Bull-Bear, you’ve received new statement(s) here,
our messages of episodic care 
in email. What is waiting here? What’s found?
You may not turn euphoric—still, you could
give love, be loved, and keep your trust in trust
along a path that’s been made clear for you.
Create the signposts, mark them as you go
outside the page of what you can control.
A softening away from vigilance, 
from individual. Become a team,
leave footprints all together. Save your world
from shock and fears. Awake you, generous
with hope. This rolling wave of confidence,
it takes you by your sharp part, points you home.


NOTE

“MyMerrill” is a heroic crown in blank verse, composed entirely of found text culled from automated emails sent by Merrill Lynch financial advisor services.


ALICIA MOUNTAIN is the author of High Ground Coward (Iowa, 2018), winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, and Thin Fire, published by BOAAT Press. Mountain earned her PhD at the University of Denver, where she was a Clemens Doctoral Fellow, and an MFA at the University of Montana in Missoula. Alicia is the 2020-2021 Artist in Residence at the University of Central Oklahoma. She is a lesbian poet based in New York City.