May 1, 2012

a poet, a tanning specialist, and the man who makes the salsa

Improbably, we shared the span of a television stage –
a cheerful, anonymous kitchen, a white screen backdrop projected
with a cartoon sun, an over-plump and vaguely therapeutic couch
with pillows propped pert at the corners like little soldiers.
Yet this is how it always is, isn’t it? These strange accidents
we barrel into, thin slices of our quiet stories intersecting.
I sat waiting my turn to tell mine, as the blender whirred with tomatillos
and a bronzed woman became even bronzer and the hosts worked their smiles
for the camera, and outside the rain made a clean slate of the new month
and a bloom rose from a waking flower and everything changed and nothing changed at all.