Why We Are No Longer Friends
Jupiter is not in the right conjunction
with the North Star.
Our addresses were lost in the mail.
The robins are flying south. A good time
to hitch a ride.
We are really friends
but just can’t read the clues.
We were never friends. One of us
was deluded.
People are starving everywhere.
This is no time to think about love.
We have not seen each other for five years.
The statute of limitations
has gone into effect.
We both know why we are not friends,
and we have taken the 5th amendment.
We thought a pen pal friendship
would do wonders for our writing ability.
We are cautious.
Like sentence fragments.
Ulysses went on a long vacation.
Why not you?
We Go To TV Land
Matt, the salesclerk, has no patience
for anyone over thirty.
He tries to tell us that we don’t need
cable anymore, that Hulu and Netflix
will do us just fine, not that he’s
involved in selling them. He’s just sayin’.
Do we want our TV smart?
My husband and I glance at each other.
We’re pretty sure we don’t want it dumb.
Do we want our TV thin, or do we want it thin?
He assumes this TV we’re interested in
is for a bedroom or a kitchen.
He can’t imagine any other destination for
a screen under forty inches.
Naturally, there’s some assembly involved.
After paying all the money, it won’t
stand upright without the use of a screwdriver.
The only good out of this deal, my husband
says, is that this thing weighs next to nothing.
We reminisce about the bad old days
when TVs weighed eighty pounds, as we
set the ten pound, slimline-LED-LCD-HD TV
on the floor and begin teaching it to stand by itself.
