Loving Other Human Beings' Faces

Okay, so I was looking through some of my old poetry on my hard drive with files from my first laptop. In the fall of '08 I took a Poetry Workshop class. One of the assignments was to "write a poem inspired by a line of another poem." Well, this one is inspired by a line from one of Franz Wright's poems, called "Walking to Martha's Vineyard." I never turned it in. Thought it was incomplete, couldn't figure out how to finish it back then. So tonight, I changed the comma at the end to a period. And that's that. It's not a beautiful poem, it's more sociopolitical than anything, so here it is:


Loving Other Human Beings’ Faces

“Hi, can I take your order?”
Radio static.
A ‘93 rusted Volvo
On a black and white screen.
A grumble.
Frustration.
Poorly hashed browns
In a greased white bag
From my lazy hands
To four worried fingers,
Stubby balloons
Of blood and bone,
Belonging
To Gary.

His doctor said
No more fast food
To a wall
Of stubborn flesh.

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I may be posting new poetry, or older poetry on this blog at later times. There's a lot of ones from my hard drive that I'd forgotten about.