Like Any Good American
I bathe my television in total attention I give it my corneas
I give it my eardrums I give it my longing
In return I get pictures of girls fighting and men flying
and women in big houses with tight faces blotting down tears
with tiny knuckles Sometimes my mother calls
and I don't answer Sometimes a siren sings past the window
and summer air pushes in dripping with the scent
of human sweat But what do I care I've given my skin
to the TV I've given it my tastes In return it gives me so many
different sounds to fill the silence where the secrets
of my life flash by like ad space for the coming season
Copyright © 2013 by Brynn Saito. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on April 5, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
"This poem was sparked by a desire to write into the everyday experience of TV-gazing. Sometimes, I'm like the speaker here: saturated with images—attempting, at times, to escape into the screen and let the pictures and stories overwhelm the silence in me, which frightens."
Brynn Saito