Noah Siela

Getting Rid of Cable/George H.W. Bush

Sitting my American ass on the couch

watching America on TV and wanting

seven hundred million ears

to listen to my weak voice

creak like floorboards under seesawing feet

waiting in line to get into hell.

We should get rid of cable.

You’ve been saying that

but George H.W. Bush died the other day

and he was spindly on CNN

the winter mom finally had enough again

and moved us from the farm to town

and we had cable just like everyone else

and didn’t need to climb the house

to swivel the antenna toward Des Moines

to watch the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower

plow furrows into the Gulf

and I felt we were out of trouble then

because even a twerp who looked more orthodontist

than president could pound Baghdad in night vision.

But George H.W., you made the Middle East look hand-made

the winter that anything phony angered me,

the winter I’d leave a gym window propped open

at Our Lady of Good Counsel to sneak in late

to dribble only with my left hand, my weak hand,

while Father Murray, in the parsonage twenty feet away,

comfortable out of his clerical blacks,

had to hear me dribbling machine gun drills,

graceless at 3/4 speed,

every time that war cut to commercial.