poem of the day 01.21.10

the old jewish lady

the old jewish lady
behind the desk
wants to tell me all about her sony reader
and her new laptop.
she wants to show me
how i can download books.
i tell her that i still like paper books
and compact discs
and televisions that come in tube form
movies that come on big screens
and phones that stay at home.
she shakes her head and says
no no no
you gotta get with the future, son,
she says
and proceeds to show me
how to download a book
anyway.

the old jewish lady
behind the desk
wants to rehash 9/11
as we navigate this new technology
she tells me how glad she is
that she was just retired
when it happened.
she said she worked down there
by the trade centers
right above the big century 21.
she wants to talk about planes
smacking into buildings
and friends of hers
who had to run
down seventy flights
of stairs
while she searches for a novel
to download.

the old jewish lady
behind the desk
tells me about her daughter
up in yonkers
her daughter is a paramedic
and a lesbian.
she calls the daughter’s lover
her “friend”
because anything else
is illegal in new york state.
she tells me it was
the daughter and her “friend”
who bought
her the sony reader
she tells me how her daughter
wanted to come into the city on 9/11
to help with the rescue
but her chauvinistic bosses
up in yonkers
wouldn’t let her.

the old jewish lady
behind the desk
tells me how she stays up late
at night
playing on her new laptop.
she tells me she called manilla
for help when she got her sony reader.
she tells me about web sites where
you can donate rice
by playing trivia games
and how one night
she stayed up until four in the morning
and ended up donating
about 200,000 grains of rice
to some impoverished nation.

the old jewish lady
behind the desk
tells me her daughter said that
200,000 grains of rice
isn’t a lot of rice.
wants me to go to this web site
to help heal the world.
but i don’t feel like helping anybody
right now.

the old jewish lady
behind the desk
doesn’t understand this.
she doesn’t understand not wanting
to help other people
or why her daughter can’t get married
in new york state to another woman
she doesn’t understand how nations
become impoverished
or why there are chauvinistic bosses.
she’s glad her daughter didn’t go
to the trade centers.
she doesn’t understand why 9/11 happened at all.

the old jewish lady
behind the desk
tries to sell me again on her sony reader
and how to download books
but i’m not biting.
because she’s already killed an hour of my life
that i’ll never get back.
it could’ve been the best hour of my life
the best one ever.
i want to tell the old jewish lady
behind the desk this
but i don’t think she’d get it.
i don’t think she’d understand where
i’m coming from at all.