The Oven Loves the TV Set
Stuck on the fridge, our favorite pin-up girl
is anorexic. On the radio we have a riff
of Muzak sax, and on the mind
a self-help book. We sprawl all evening, all
alone, in the unraised ranch;
all day the company we kept
kept on incorporating. As for the world
of poverty, we did our best, thanks
to a fund of Christian feeling
and mementos from
Amelia, the foster child, who has
the rags and seven photogenic sisters we prefer
in someone to be saved. She's proof
Americans have got a heart
to go with all that happy
acumen you read about. We're known to love
a million little prettinesses,
decency, and ribbons on
the cockapoo. (But who
will study alphabets for hands? Who gives
a damn what patience goes into
a good wheelchair? Who lugs the rice
from its umpteen stores
to the ends of the earth, to even
one dead-end? Not we.)
Our constitutional pursuit
is happiness, i.e.
somebody nice, and not
too fat, we can have
for our personal friend.
Copyright Credit: Heather McHugh, “The Oven Loves the TV Set” from Hinge & Sign: Poems, 1968-1993. Copyright © 1994 by Heather McHugh. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Source: Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 (Wesleyan University Press, 1994)