OPTIMISM
Buddy, can you spare me a dime bag of it?
Every radio and minister and mom-&-pop
combo in town wails, "It's getting better
all the time," and all I see are graveyards
unrolling for miles. My boss gives me a raise,
tongue flapping like a pink slip in the wind.
My wife buys me a blue angora sweater.
All my chest-hairs scream, anticipating it
stripped off me like a Band-Aid in divorce-
court. The judge leads cheers; spectators
whack me with Ms magazines. President K
calls the recession "Kaput," as soldiers stack
derelicts on wheelbarrows aimed toward
black buildings painted with orange flames.
"Contents may have settled during shipping,"
the box says. Settled for what? Why won't
Southern Comfort gush from my golf cap,
and azaleas shake out of my hands? What
I'd give to say, "The TV works; that's something!"
I grope my head for some knob that will change
my life. All therapy boils down to this:
"Look on the bright side." (Blindness. Heat stroke.)
"Think happy thoughts." (Peter Pan fills
his diaper in a nursing home.) Even this tossed
salad you serve, love—what do I see in its hollow
crystal ball? Lettuce (Let us pray; we need to);
Onions (waxy balls of tears); tomatoes (blood-
relatives of Deadly Nightshade); mushroom clouds.
from Reading the Water, published by Northeastern University Press, © 1997 by Charles Harper Webb.