AUGUST 1998 | VOL. 2, NO. 3

POETRY

CURRENT POETRY

RECENT POETRY
David Hunter Sutherland

GREGORY FARNUM

89� PLUS DEPOSIT
Deconstruct that, you mother.
A computer's artful rendition
of the face of Meg Ryan:
lovely, luminous skin and eyes of
blue that stare out from the cover of
a magazine. I move up.
A celebration of 75 years of Time;
inside, American technology and capitalism
are the engines that drive the world.
It's an exciting place in there --
dizzying heights...no limits...spanning space and
time. I flip backwards as the woman in
front of me counts her change...
to the famous shot of the Spanish loyalist
at the moment when the bullet found him
-- "Does that man with the cart
have ten items or less?" she asks me,
old clerk eyes hard and suspicious.
"Is he still there?"
I turn. There he is. No longer young,
dressed in that look of worries
that buzz about your head like insects,
gradually attaining their own sort of
group consciousness, ten items --
maybe nine -- carefully arranged,
brow furrowed, eyes asking
What now?
"He's right there," and
"Yes."
Why did she ask me?
Funny, he was hidden behind my small frame.
"...turned the gun on himself
as police closed in" the radio tells me
back in the car. It was near Hartford
Connecticut, near where Pete lives.
Stress related leave of absence they say.
This one sought out the executives
rather than killing his co-workers.
Four dead
five, counting the gunman
if I heard it right.
The governor arrived to help with the healing,
grief counselors parachuting in.
Watch carefully before braving the headlights
of the winter rain darkened five
(on this stretch, six) lanes.
There. I'm on the road. Headed home.
That's what we need, I say to my audience of SUVs,
more stress, more guns,
more professors.