Newspaper

I can still buy a newspaper

with columns

organized like hot dogs

boiling in a saucepan

side by side in the roiling water

the ink made from soybeans

which will please all the land owners

surrounding this field

neatly plotted with cracking streets

full of speed bumps

with side by side mobile homes

just enough space between

for a little lawn

and a tree or two

That's not news here

in the pre-death zone

for either people saving money

with dirty children boarding

on the pavement trying hard

to miss a canyon which could

send them sprawling

or gray-haired boredom babies

waiting for rebirth

The fifteen mile per hour signs

mean what they say

as if yelling in white and black

were still the fashion

in newspapers

where color now exists

to compete with every screen

old cathode ray tube or light-emitting diode

Newspapers have a hard time

putting video next to the political story

with politicians yelling

even when the video wasn't started

No sir or madam I am not interested

in the price of tea at Walmart

until I'm ready to buy tea at Walmart

which may not be possible

because I have news for everyone

I hate liquids without caffeine

and enough sugar to make a syrup

neither of which I can have

caffeine keeps me awake

while the sugar eats away

at the nerves in my painful feet

the pain moving slowly enough

as if to suggest someone reading

a newspaper slowly and with feeling

the stories appealing broadly

as the papers get narrow

magnifying lenses at the ready

just as another child

finds the cement rising quickly

as bruises lend hues of blue and black

on the screen of the knees

with more than occasional stripes

of red in scrapes and rashes

This is not news where news

does not exist on a daily basis

except where people

filter through doors

or on sidewalks

to get their bills and ads

left by postal workers

who no longer drive

red white and blue mail trucks

wearing sweat-stained blue shirts

dark blue pants

blue on white agency designed eagles

modernized to reflect a new image

of mail speed

full of pizza cookie and chip products

We're far enough out

that our be-jeaned mail person

drives a Jeep

telling me my box number

when I mention my name

Even here numbers loom larger

than dignity

I can still buy a newspaper

but I don't

because Facebook and Google

bring the news and opinion

I need the most

where retirement doesn't need any

and I can print coupons

without clipping with scissors

Good-bye great newspaper writers

good-bye fourth estate and democracy

good-bye sweaty postal worker

I know you pray for electronic pulses

from the next nuclear something

that stops all this nonsense

and we have to return

to the old black and white

where Miss Ella Olson

returned to Windom

to visit her parents for tea

and stay the night

sleeping soundly in a bed

old familiar and covered

in Mrs. Olson's handmade quilts

so colorful as if to blind the dead

Barry G. Wick