Summer Oven Letter

Dear Nana,

The weather here, hot. Slow burning heat your
toaster oven door left open & set to full
blackness burning bagels, bread, tiny
imitation pizzas into dessicated cardboard
landscapes pockmarked & cratered, no hours of
clear water revival can revert post mark lost
stamp torn off, a pile of paper in your foyer
& puzzles tied with a twine string, just, stillness.
vacuumed silence aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa sliced & served
with a small plastic cup revealing your voyages to
Colonial Williamsburg, Bermuda, or Disneyland time-traveling
mementos documenting weather patterns in letters
How many squirrels did you see today?
Certainly more than me. I have 73 channels to
flip through compared to your fuzzy five
so time exploring the yard, the garage,
the basement, memories, weather, took precedent to
TV dinners fishamajigs & a sinking slow heat
seeping through storm doors vacuum packages &
your places for hiding money--plastic children's cups
I think--palmed bills warm from your hands,
I know you saw squirrels today.
........................................................ XOXO Chris

Class Notes: A Communication Model

scooped with tea, while waiting for channels to change

a silent sky of snow falls like static, muted

SecondNight

the cardboard is packed
(not stacked or absorbing the sounds
of a television
downstairs.)

so this is what my
computer is like.

it took two hours
of looking at all labels
(no meat &
the cheapest goods)
to save twenty-four
dollars.

tomorrow maybe
a haircut.

tea for two to start
the day (waking up
to dick
who came to remove
the hot tub.)

green walls no longer
blue

i can go to bed with
the Gilmore girls
& a bed stuffed
with animals.

(comments included with
placement of TV.)

conversations
across
the room.
half in computer,
half spoken.

we can forge
a new family
in the space between.

tea time

back broken by the lifting of lumber, jack could
do nothing but rest & wait for the return of po-
sterity through a slumbering regiment; sticky p-
otato chip hands, hot dogs eaten raw from the f-
reezer, falling asleep in his brown arm chair,
jack, white wrapped in long john coveralls, dri-
ed in the heat of the electronic hearth glowing
three’s company & draining battery lives till no
remote could change the arid airwaves—like sand
through an hourglass so passed the days of jack’
s life—just watching the same channel over & ov-
er & over again till it all was rerun & he could
predict the future & control time in thirty min-
ute intervals & in a symphony of board, hammer,
nail, jack was foreman once more molding from m-
emory a true HOME for the next generation, the
next lonely lovers to live in peace & comfort c-
oming together in a room of brady bunch sinceri-
ty, making the world a tv land once more.

telephone 7

Hey, remember when I had an original thread?

hey, remember when…

i knew how to start a poem?
read a book?
not plan life around TV?

i took walks in the woods?
pictures of my shoes?
more than just journal entries?

i only wrote dripping prose without punctuation bent over computer lab keyboards before every procrastinated paper deadline outlining the final fall of self crashing into volcanoes of colour or robotic battle grounds?

i had fake glasses?
a desk where there wasn’t crayon writing on the wall or a civil war calendar next to me?
punctuality.