Felicia Sanzari Chernesky
For television—bless its heart—is not congenial
to messages of naked hate.
—Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
so why deny our troubled souls
from pressing on those wounds that make us real?
A bruise can teach
pulsing hammer beats
our brains to pulp, and then we resurrect
to feast on what was never ours
mindless of the chance to learn
but hurling it aside for something “more,”
we were told, to keep us entertained
Terrible Things! What nourishment we waste.
Our taste buds never had a chance to bloom
beneath a sun of better minds at play
a brain’s a brain’s a brain’s a brain’s a brain’s
for breakfast lunch and dinner what we crave
No just deserts.
like the break of day
on this gloomy, shuffling consciousness
we lurch a stagger-waltz
entrails dangling
smear our blood on flickering shadow walls
Is this some kind of sick twisted joke?
We keen in mother tongue mouths agape
misplace the faculty to laugh
among the knobs and sinew that remain.
A loss—yes—of Miltonian proportions:
The Abyss versus On Demand
contemporary drama at its finest
but chew on this in the consuming
who are consumers, who are gobbled up?
A bit of human gristle in the teeth…
yet you just can’t keep a Zombie down
***
Felicia Sanzari Chernesky is a longtime editor, slowly publishing poet, and author of six picture books, including From Apple Trees to Cider, Please! and The Boy Who Said Nonsense (Albert Whitman & Company). In 2018 she moved away from the masthead of an academic quarterly to work with those who want to share their ideas, stories, and poems in print.