Four Poems Where The Television Is Turned On
1.
So startling, this grace,
the clerestory of trees braiding
in the first winds of fall-back.
They tap impatiently during sex.
The winter, from the bed, like the window,
nearby, upside down like a bat, and black.
2.
Long shadows and long shadows.
Something squirreling in the grass
on the slowest news day of the year.
Tiger Attack on Christmas! with
reporters clotted together, breathless.
The witnesses are thrilled. They say
the tiger blended into the field
& all they saw was an empty field.
3.
The first snow is Polaroid,
boxed into city squares,
washed by canaries and tans.
The migratory TV signals flock
to the clutter of my apartment
where I watch the up-market
and horrifying hair of the anchor
twitch slightly along with his rising voice.
Is Miss New Jersey being blackmailed?
Outside, it’s so bright. Morning. The usual.
4.
Downtown the homeless, frozen out
of the walls they baby into,
are headed god knows where.
There is a Pulitzer winner
asleep on my bed. She told me
to try and shake the images loose.
The problem, I hear a voice say,
is all we have to shoot anymore
is each other.
