Went looking for
an all-wire coat hanger
this morning to be bent
and reshaped to be
a radio antenna, to insert
into my broken antenna,
to extend the range, to make
a distant station better, to stop
the infernal static;

shocked and dismayed to see
I don’t have one, not a one.
My hangers are plastic, rarely
are wooden, don’t have a wire
component at all; I have
so many hangers and none
fill the bill.

I don’t want
this to be true. I am dismayed
by this. I don’t know
how I’m supposed to react —
thinking of all the times
I’ve bent one to open
a car door, stretched out one
to scratch an itch, used one
to do…well, anything you need to;
can’t think of more to do but
there must be something —

while I’m at it
I don’t dare mention
the radio in the car
stuck now on the same
station, not to mention
the now-useless buttons
on the radio, not to mention
the paucity of stations on the radio —

and don’t speak of the television
and its ridiculous commercials
telling you of every illness
you can’t cure and of
the death benefits and sickness payments
everyone is afraid of, if not now
then someday, if not someday
then now hidden in you frail body —

thus defeated I hang my head,
I keep the radio on with the static
and the meaning and the dropping
of the stations
and my own tremendous failures
and tiny triumphs of the will,
wondering how to make the station work
as it used to in the olden days
of wire hangers and hope.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T