TV Night

By Daniel McGinn

I’ve never been to the place
Daisy goes when she drinks
her wine in her small room,
at a folding table for one,
under a small cloud
that’s always threatening rain.

Her cloud changes constantly
as her eyes are prone to do
as she watches television
and dreams, looking at stage sets,
studying the way actors clump together
in small groups talking.

She turns down the sound
and watches until she figures out
which one of these people is her.

Daisy would have been that
size a long time ago when she
was small enough to fit in
that small screen.

The man in the fedora drinking
an old fashioned and smoking
a viceroy is her father.

She sits there watching red wine
pool up to her ankles, it’s her blood
and she spills it from time to time,
missing the glass when it reaches
her lips.

The cloud sinks darker
and deeper into Daisy’s room.

She wears the cloud
like a blindfold
and it grows so heavy
it snaps her neck.

Her head falls forward
but the television keeps playing
and the actors are acting
out a scene that happened
when she was only 12.

Her father is angry and the house
is filling up with smoke.

As she falls asleep she reaches
for the glass of wine again and
again and again.

In the morning
when she wakes up,
the cloud is gone,
her father is dead and none of this
ever happened.