ONE MICRO, TWO POEMS

A man and a woman were starring in a soap opera. Their characters were called Adam and Eve, and their courtship was huge for the ratings. As popularity grew, the actors were together all the time. They fell in love and had a son. His name isn’t important, but he was always on set, so the writers wrote him into the soap as Adam and Eve’s son and they named him Cain. Naturally. Writers love things like that—so amused by their minds.  

Anyways, the writers began inserting parts of the actors’ lives into the scripts—the stealing of office supplies, the refusing to take off sunglasses at marriage counseling, the spending exorbitantly on rare aquarium miniatures—it all went in the show. It got confusing—what was real life versus fiction, and what was fiction laundered into real life, and what was genuine human emotion reacting to fiction. No one was more confused than the actor who played Cain. After a while he had a younger brother and you can guess what the writers called his character when they wrote him into the soap. The four of them went on like this for a while as the show waned in popularity. One night, the actor who played Cain crept into the room of his sleeping brother, the actor who played Abel, and struck him down with a priceless fish tank castle. In police custody, the actor who played Cain’s only explanation was “I just read the lines.” Funny enough, press from the incident did actually spark interest in the show. It’s still on today with the same actors still starring as Adam and Eve. I guess I’m not sure what the point of this story is. Just interesting, I guess.

Can we take the jet or should we buy tickets
for Florida next month
says the woman beside me   
to her decrepit husband. Their dog   
is making doody at our feet, having finished   
a $43 bone marrow starter  
and grown restless. I picked this place   
because I read a drunk heiress clubbed some old lady   
with her clutch here on New Year's Eve 

and I wanted to see where wealth undergoes   
entropy. Now that the meal’s concluded,   
a toast: to the canine companions   
of second wives; to dying old in your golf simulator;   
to clapping too hard when The Rock appears   
in a movie; to total exoneration  
after the accidental discharge of your EDC   
at the water park; to cutting off a digit   
and pretending it was in your soup. 

Everything is clear when your stomach is full.   
I can’t even tell you what I want to   
do to myself when I look at it all, but it ain’t pretty.   
You have to make eye contact during a toast  
or you’ll have seven years of bad sex.

I.

Simply put, there’s no proof of this.  
Here’s what you can expect from your time  
at Build-a-Bear Workshop. After you pick

your companion, you will fill it with essence.  
Though it’s not real, they will ask you to hold  
the small cloth heart in your hand and kiss it.

Then they’ll bury it inside your companion.   
They don’t control the world,   
but you might find comfort in their company. 

II.

Did you mean to say “Buddenbrooks group?”  
Now searching for a Thomas Mann   
reading groups in your area.

Summary: a bourgeois family wanes  
in relevance over several generations  
while their wealth diminishes,

culminating in its final patriarch being   
institutionalized. That does sound like  
something you might be interested in.