The Catch

a voice out a nearby window

-did Betty White just die?

and the Russian girl next door

says something to her pit bull.

-he's frisky and bilingual

and the black and white

post war melodramas play out

on the post millennial screens.

am I like the jailor who

slides a tray of cardboard hope

with a side of
reconstituted mashed potatoes

under the cell door?

a leathery guy

inked from wrist to shoulder,

apparently a truck driver,

leans on his cane

on the weedy lawn downstairs.

he's all wound up about

some shit he's getting handed

by the company, the union
and the cops.

his voice gets smothered
under motor noise.

-the leasing authority

maintenance crew is busy

chopping off the heads of dandelions

on green and yellow riding mowers.

back in the dim bedroom

a back to back to back

show about the crab fishermen

in the icy Bering Sea
plays on and on all afternoon.

the catch is measured in

hundreds of thousands of tons,

a quota determined each season.

elsewhere -here in this room-

the crab has a quota of it's own