A Poem

by Foster Cameron Hunter

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January 20, 2012

is a night on the couch in front of the TV, 

as Rachel Ray tosses together thirty minute 

Good Eats, where pop-eyed news pundits 

play reality game show host, or a funny fat man 

on cat’s feet quips his sexy but loud and nasally 

wife, or the tale of a girl who plays patty-cake 

with the ghost of her stepmom. A poem 

is Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells finessing 

a phrase, the cadence of Bela Lugosi’s soliloquy 

or Joan Crawford’s icy cold revenge— 

the screech and crash, Bang, Boom POW 

of a War of the Worlds, as politicians wrangle

to take liberties with Miss Information, 

and scandal is the Talk Soup d’jour. A poem 

is media pimps tricking out cheeseburgers 

and fries to sell kids sex, and pornography 

defines the First Amendment. A poem 

is a dark screen and a twirling blue circle of light, 

spinning me off to bed—where the story lines 

are rounded up, shaken down and cleaned off.