trout

Caroline Sinavaiana

Nevermind

if the landlady goes back on
her word after you move in &
says you can’t have a cat after all,

if she invites exterminators
to tent your house in the
middle of your chemotherapy,

if your ex-lover continues living
up to his negative potential
progressing down a steep hill

very fast, toward the pit, like
your sad country on the brink
of yet another war, worshiping

at the altar of Viagra futures &
golden parachutes, & the idea
of heaven as a   putting green

where oriental angels clad in
G-strings arrive in golf carts
to deliver your shots of Wild

Turkey & lap dances after
greasing their designated
poles at Club Nirvana.   While

meanwhile back at the ranch,
snipers pick off children on
the way to school & bus drivers

in the dawn’s early light, citizens
tanking up at gas stations &
wives coming out of Home

Depot.   Nevermind, if strangers living
in caves hate you so much they’re
willing to fly airplanes into your towers

of Babel.   Nevermind, if reality TV
is failing to keep up with, well,
reality, if “Fear Factor” &

“Survivor” are distracting you
from your appointed rounds,
like noticing, for example,

that your constitution has this
unfortunate penchant for paralyzing
democracy, or that Martha Stewart

could learn a thing or two about
baking cornbread from this black
man living in a subway tunnel

under Penn Station, who looks
up from his baking to tell the
camera that buttermilk is definitely

superior to sweet milk for proper
texture: cooking tips from a New
York cave-dwelling delivered

to the back beat of subway trains
crisscross rumbling overhead
for twenty-five years.   He tells

us, “Yeah, we homeless people,
but, if you know how to cook,
you got to cook right.” Whose

neighbor in the next shanty over
introduces us to his pet gerbils “Ms.
Peaches” & “Ms.   Bleaks”, who

speaks for his cave village, the
burning wish for a door that
locks, a Fridgidaire, & a TV.

Yes, nevermind, okay. You
could have it worse, like
all those geckoes, their tiny

blue bodies lying here &
there after the fumigation
troops removed the tents &

you could move back in.

for Kurt Cobain

NB: Several lines from “Nevermind” were stolen from the following sources Thomas Merton (Run to the Mountain, 1995), Daniel Lazare (The Frozen Republic:   How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy, 1996), and an unidentified speaker from the video documentary, Dark Days (2000).