gave me an entire stack
of game cards
and I almost won a Jeep
23 times yesterday except
I never matched 3 of 3
pictures EXACTLY,
always 2 Jeeps
and a Pepsi, never a third
and I kept telling my friend
on the phone to hold on, hold on
because I wanted her to know
exactly when I won the Big Red Jeep
so I'd say, wait, wait, damn-
can you believe it?
and she kept saying, ooh,
big surprise and threatened
to hang up and I'd say, wait,
just one more Jeep please God,
but never the third picture
of the soft-top, manual 5 speed
that promised immeasurable sunsets
and giggles so I turned the cards
into confetti for their part
in encouraging the illusion of possibility,
the billboard-perfect Vegas Big Winner,
that kind of false good-times-image
you find in U-Haul ads--whole families
loving the hell out of moving
boxes into an over-priced tract house
and I mean they love it, no one sweats,
Mom looks great, Dad's not yelling
at the kids to cut out the crap,
stack the heaviest boxes on the bottom,
and for God's sake, in a row
and at his wife for over-packing,
mixing the wares of daily and China
and I'm standing under the yellow hum
of fluorescent light
thinking this card is too perfect
a metaphor for life, the little box
rubbed off at the bottom
that reads VOID IF REMOVED
and now how in the hell
am I supposed to get all of this loss
out from under my nails?
