Mixed Media
People can't read blurred newspapers, even if you do drop them into their laps.
Even if you do fold them outward, crisp and sharp-edged and nice and neat.
And when you circle some letters in red
Just to tell them a secret message
Your subtly crafted, seemingly casual and cute clues cannot be deciphered.
For the newspaper is blurred; it won't be read
Not even by the smelliest sage
Or the keenest hawk-eye.
So stop shaking those letters around
Stop rumbly-tumblying those columns and obits and op-eds and maybe
You can just hand it to them,
Folded, steady, maybe not neat but at least legible
And maybe if they read it,
If you let them understand,
Maybe they will see what's going on with your news.
1 comment:
Here's what makes this poem doubly enjoyable for me. First, it's well written, it plays off of multiple ideas of messages/communication, and it smashes together the realms of newspaper-ness and interpersonal communication. Second, if this indeed references a specific act by a specific person then the very delivery of this castigation in the mode of metaphoric poetry performs the very act it disparages - namely, communicating something personal from one person to another using oblique referents – which further proves the point it makes. Genius.
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