Midnight Routine, Part II
It’s a commerical with a man
Talking in mute on the phone, this time.
Someone, I imagine,
With a fetish for outsourcing.
It is no longer enough to call sexy singles.
He phones a call center in India
Just to close his eyes dreamily,
To talk to brown girls overseas about credit cards.
Even sex being outsourced now,
Leaving sexy singles with no rent,
No way to pay for tuition.
He talks to her and eats popcorn.
It’s all he eats now, because
He read once that everything we eat is made of corn
So he knows it doesn’t matter.
He is proud because popcorn is worth zero Weight Watcher’s Points, so he can eat as much popcorn as he wants.
He imagines an inevitable catastrophe
In which some parasite
Destroys American corn as we know it.
An Irish potato famine for us.
An American corn famine,
Like the Irish potato famine,
But billions of dollars more lost.
Thousands of lives more lost.
Hundreds of people you know.
And no more popcorn.
Soon, even corn will be outsourced
To other places.
The last great American good
Will be destroyed
We will not know what to do, but
Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy.
Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy.
Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy.
Cry, cry, cry, cry cry.
The thought of producing,
Of creating (corn, art, ideas),
Will be nothing but a distant myth.
Your sex will come from Indian call centers
And your popcorn will come from Chinese Weight Watchers.
I pick up my phone. It’s midnight.
Buy, cry, buy, cry, buy.
I just want to talk to sexy singles tonight.
Natalie said,
April 9, 2009 at 5:50 am
I’m allergic to corn. I really am. Now, popcorn sounds amazing. Not just any popcorn, but the really buttery kind you get at a movie theater, or kettle corn. Yum. But alas…