The Air

Usually if I have a bit of time on the weekend, I write up a review of whatever book I've finished the week before and set it to post on Monday morning.  But this is tech week for the high school musical--opening night is this Thursday--and I haven't quite finished the book I was reading last week.  Mostly I've been reading poems, because I found some new volumes at the college library.

One of those volumes is Rae Armantrout's Money Shot.  A lot of the poems seem a little spare to me, like there should be more to them.  But this one--this one seems to me to be about precisely the situation I'm in this Monday morning.  I see it as a poem about not having much to say, but looking for a way to say something anyway:

The Air

1
Our first gods
were cartoon characters--

quirks and quarks--
each dead
wrong,
and immortal.

2
Silence is death
and
silence is dead-air.

Give a meme
a hair-do.

Give it a split-screen.

Make it ask itself
the wrong question.

Make it eat questions
and grow long.

Especially after reading a lot of blogger responses to the "four things meme" lately, I like the lines "make it ask itself/the wrong question."  What exactly is the wrong question when you're just looking for something to say?  The pointed question?  The important question?  Or maybe just a question that's mildly amusing and makes people want to know more?