[Newspoetry] the Weight

[Rick Burkhardt]

The Weight

The giant in the story
will not eat you, I told
my daughter, because the giant only
eats people for your amusement.

"Would the giant eat me if I found
it amusing?" she asked.  "Even then,"
I replied, "the giant
would not eat you, because I

would not find that amusing, and that's
the only way it counts."
"Would the giant take his clothes
off?"  "Maybe," I admitted.

"The giant is visibly topheavy.  That could
be an argument either way, couldn't it?
I mean this story is clearly
sentimental and nationalistic and therefore

not about nude giants per se, more like a
collective moral mouth rinse to fight greed, which is why I
can tell it to you despite everything.  Of course it may be
a huge metaphor for the embargo on Iraq, in which case

everything in it gets a second meaning, like in
a sweepstakes, and can retire early to one of those
airy duplexes in a hip gated community
-- this is, you know, a condition, not an idea."

"Good idea," said one of several
George Bushes, I forget which,
"I'm starving, -- though in order
to eat anything I'd have to first descend upon

it with my talons outstretched, and that's really
too much effort, or as you probably call it, work.  I'm trying
to demonstrate how well I fit in both camps, not
that you'll cave in and vote for me anyway

no matter how much you fear
the Democratic Party (or is it
the other way around?  who knows?)
-- hey, I can afford

all the multiple meanings you want!
They're on me!  Put it on
my Late Capital Card, for which
I get frequent flyer liquid spaces, because

even distance has gone postmodern.  You know
this reminds me of a party I never left
as the kid nobody anymore can be.  Equanimity
was really attained there, a gelatinous one,

between meanings or whatever, and you know
what it felt like?  It felt just like
The United Nations.  All the waiters
are topless there, in every sense."