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News at Noon
By Mary E. Weems
Television has a place in the house
like
the mat on the dining room table, the dog and cat,
tables, couches, and chairs.
It’s
midday and I take in recent deaths
with
my Subway sandwich. One after another recently departed
names,
no faces get their 60 seconds of fame. No time
for
close-ups, family interviews, respect for the dead
imbedded in reporters reading teleprompters, watching
laptop
computer screens, keeping emotions
in-line with the script—
A
reporter briefly mentions a man discovered dead inside
his
house.
Reported by a neighbor tired of stacking the man’s
newspapers on the front porch,
then
the back porch, then beside the garage for twelve
months.
His
concern an environmental mental note he tossed around
for 90
days before dialing 911.
The
neighbor knew where the spare key was. The officers
walked
over a sea of different-colored-envelopes, their
footprints
reading Past Due, Cancelled, Collections.
Everything a perfect combination of neat and dust, the
spiders
covering the ceilings guarded their webs like soldiers.
Keeping cop noses to the ground, they hear a commercial
advertising
McDonald’s
just in time for the lunch they’ll have right
after
this.
In the
bedroom, what’s left of the man slouches in front of his
HDTV.
The reclining chair holding him
like a woman.
posting 25 February 2007 * *
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