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Status, Alas

Today's poem is Status, Alas by Adrian Blevins. It is read by Julia Bouwsma.

Status, Alas

I began to feel helpless & desperate in a familiar way
vis-à-vis time & space alas & where to put the hands

& feet & how not to talk to strangers & friends
& was raised American & middle-class & watched

heaps of TV & got therefore an addictive personality
& a bad biochemistry & anyhow just wanted one day

to buy a few new blankets & quilts & pillows
& sheets. Plus a new skirt & shirt & rug & mug

though outside already was the beefy F150
waiting to haul me to a cabin up north where there’d be

a tiny roadside store for bread & milk, though
also in the driveway hovered figuratively alas, alas

a mortgage & insurance & car payments & a kid in college
& the need to eat more than bread & milk & an allergist

& a phlebotomist & the primary care physician
& lumberjack & plumber & such & such & such & such

& such. So where to put my shopping ache or whatever
as in how to stop it was really the problem like not having

Bee Balm to sniff was the problem & the fact of there being
an excellent greenhouse nearby was the problem. & though

a fox I could follow into the woods might help, the problem is
a breeder in Oklahoma selling fox puppies for $450 each

not including postage & handling & would I hold mine
& caress it like a child or set it loose is the problem

& how would I feed it or would it feed me
& what would we have to kill & how would we sleep

& can one even grow old in a hole of gnawed bones
& would I even fit & what kind of quilts would there be

& pillows & blankets & sheets?