News
Kim Addonizio
Because no reporters came to my door
wanting to confirm my low opinion
of the Bush administration,
because not even the Jehovah’s Witnesses,
who can usually be counted on
to arrive each Saturday
bearing informative articles on Satan’s wiles
and the hour of judgment
can be counted on this afternoon,
I have no one to tell
that the load of laundry I managed
to carry to the washer
has been transferred successfully
to the dryer. I even was able
to make myself coffee and toss the cat’s toy
onto her carpeted platform
before returning to my bed.
These were little victories
over a sullen god – the one who hunkers down
and rocks back and forth, muttering
that there’s no reason to go on
lifting the stone of today
only to watch it roll down into tomorrow.
And now I feel compelled to report
that when the clothes were dry and warm
I got up and folded them and put them away.
Then I finally dressed, late in the afternoon,
and looked out the window and saw
my neighbor, an old black man who lives alone
and sits on his porch most days
in a ratty kitchen chair. So I got my harmonica
and played a bit of Sonny Terry I’d been working on
and I don’t know if he listened, if it lit
a match to the damp cigarette of his joy
I can’t say, but maybe it did
in some small and unrecorded way.