Garrison Keillor

So I get a phone call the other day
from a number I don’t recognize.
I picked it up by mistake, I usually
let it go to the machine.  It was Heather.
She said she was calling for Garrison Keillor.
I said, “Who?”  She said, “You don’t know
Garrison Keillor?” in that voice that
rises on every-other-word.  I said
“would I say who if I did?”
She explained that they have this
radio program, “millions listen”
something about the prairie.
I said, I live in New York
that I prefer the ocean. I said
“The prairie is just so empty.”
She said, “Never mind.”  Said they
saw my poem online, want to read
it on the radio.  I said, “which one?”
She said, “The one about
the trailer park.”  I said, “Oh, that one.
It’s not very good.  I have others.”
She said they want the one about
the trailer park.  I said, “No thanks.”
& hung up on Heather, just another
tel-a-marketer from Minnesota.

Trailer Park

She didn’t like it when I said
something was “trailer park”:
buying canned beer by the case
red wine in gallon bottles
America’s Idol, the shopping channel
vegetables at Aldi’s (shrink-wrapped
cucumbers, tomatoes), flocks of
coupons, flyers in Sunday’s papers.

My excuse is:  it’s only America
I didn’t plan it this way —

hell, I want that trailer park beauty
in hot pants, halter top stretched
marked tattooed titties to be
playing Beethoven on her stereo
steaming organic kale
sauteeing  free-range chicken
for her children, saving money
for a Prius, her boyfriend working
3 jobs to buy that double-wide
next door, a real Xmas tree this year
&, if not a ring, at least the promise
whispered last night on new sheets.

**These were published in “2: an Anthology of Poets & Writers from the 2nd Sunday @ 2 Open Mic for Poetry & Prose” (Riverside Community Press, 2016),

Dan Wilcox is the host of the Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center in Albany, N.Y. and is a member of the poetry performance group “3 Guys from Albany”.  As a photographer, he claims to have the world’s largest collection of photos of unknown poets.  His book Gloucester Notes is available from FootHills Publishing.