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

Credit

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.

About this Poem

"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