The Bachelor Watches “The Bachelor”

I sit on the couch & witness my life

projected on a screen — I am white

w/a chiseled, dimpled chin & no lips.

I’m a farmer who lives alone in a loft

& not a lowly office worker who lives

w/a roommate in an apartment where

dust balls decorate the floors & walls

& the ceiling rings w/children’s feet

running back & forth like baby bulls.

I am crazy enough to be a contestant

on a show where I’m contractually obligated

to propose to a woman who believes

in a heteronormative, patriarchal

idea of what a family should be.

At the end of every episode, I offer

roses to those I wish to make out w/more

& take out on prepackaged romantic dates

I could never afford on my bachelor budget.

For example: a date in a castle, a glass

slipper prop, a clock winding its way

down to midnight. My date & I sip

champagne, chat & eat, then we dance

to a live orchestra led by a maestro

who wishes he were dead. A giant screen appears

& plays a clip of a live-action Cinderella movie

w/Prince Charming played by an actor

I’ve seen slaughter & behead a soldier

like clipping the head off a rose.

In real life, my dates consist of dinner

at Burger King where we dine on chicken

fries & don paper crowns for a royal feel.

On another show date, I take two women into South

Dakota where we fly over the heads of white

slave owners carved into a sacred Native mountain.

At the end of the date, I offer no roses to either

woman & abandon them on a canopied bed

in the middle of the Badlands & take off

in a helicopter to provide the cameras

an aerial view of wilderness & despair.

At the end of the show, I find myself proposing

to a fertility nurse in a barn made to look

like a chapel & not the place where I raised

my first horse, fucked my first goat. Here,

I will milk the cows for our future offspring

to drink straight from the teat like I did as a kid.

The show ends & I rise from the couch

& walk into the kitchen. On bended knee,

I reach for a bottle of beer deep

in the back of the fridge, pop the top

like a question & take a swig, cold

& crisp once it hits my full lips.