New Lines for Fortune Cookies
—after Frank O’Hara
You have been smiling across the table at your date
with a sesame seed stuck in your teeth.
You will gain sophistication, become accepted by Reader’s
Digest, and retire in Puyallup.
In your next life you will be a teacher
and no one will ever call you by your first name.
After your next vacation you will come home
and discover that your neighbors have redecorated
in the style of Iowa trailer court.
If you feel like you’re getting old,
secretly plant zucchini in your neighbor’s flowerbeds.
Avoid people who iron their sheets
or roll their socks & underwear.
Painting and poetry and music will show us where we should
be going, not the senate or tv news.
The next thermos bottle you see will actually
be a listening device made in Korea.
All the people in this restaurant
are glad that they are not you.
Copyright Credit: James Masao Mitsui, "New Lines for Fortune Cookies" from From a Three-Cornered World. Copyright © 1997 by James Masao Mitsui. Reprinted by permission of University of Washington Press.
Source: From a Three-Cornered World (University of Washington Press, 1997)