Advertising

originally published September 10, 2008

I want a new toaster. I want a new life. I want a car that smells like the ocean. I want scentless armpits and a flabless stomach. I want fat-free French fries. I want a pet that will not die. I want a babysitter, a housemaid, a chef, a gardener, a pirate, a personal stylist, and a personal trainer. I want to drink gasoline like strawberry lemonade. I want brandished scabbards and easily concealed stun guns. I want wildcats and oil refineries. I want a monkey in a necktie and a pit bull in a holiday sweater. I want cures for all neurological disorders and personality defects. I want tax writeoffs and substitute teachers in sweater vests; I want fluoride in the water and stardust in my eyes; I want instant enlightenment via instant messenger. I want cortisone, Botox, Xerox, and detox. I want underwear that is thin as tissue paper and edible. I want Singapore to do what I want. I want the cusp of the night and the organic fruit of the Nile, and I want them attractively packaged and immediately available to me. I want nutritionally refreshing dietary supplements. I want suppositories and turnip greens. I want vested interests and trails of slime. I want containers of Mrs. Butterworth’s and piping-hot hotcakes under my silken pillows. I want no side effects unless the side effects are pleasurable, in which case it’s okay. I want legwarmers and lip gloss on the first date. I want cigarette girls and Rockettes, struggling actresses and sensually repressed librarians, busty lifeguards and hula-hooping party chicks from 60s surf movies, high-class dames and gangsters’ molls. I want the peanut, the pennant, and the panties. I want seedless grapes, pre-chopped onions, pitless peaches, easy olives, pre-peeled bananas, pre-heated burritos, already-huckled huckleberries, and a Blackberry and a cellphone under each armpit. I want revolutionary fervor; I want open swamplands awash with alligators, mist, and mystery; I want roosters in their magnificent, somehow patriotic plumage. I want to do what the forefathers intended, and I want to do this by spending money. I want celebrity-studded telethons after natural disasters. I want spit-shined cowboy boots. I want discount hostage negotiators and sports utility time machines. I want space-age packing peanuts and Halloween masks of indicted reality TV personalities. I want a pouch for her pleasure. I want jeans that make my ass look good. I want one ounce of soda for every minute of the movie, and yes, make those the super nachos for me, please. I want the president with the jug ears. I want a hobby horse for my tugboat and a jug band for my houseboat. I want to puke off the ski lift because that is my right. I want the Tantric orgasms but without the spiritual training and all that tedious shit. I want multi-symptom cold and flu relief. I want to join the ambassador’s club; I want heated seats, an extra pillow, a free cocktail after six p.m., the stewardess to give me that little extra bit of attention because she knows I am somebody fierce and important, a someone to be reckoned with. I want lost continents, restored monarchy, reconstructed tenements, computer-generated predators, cotton-candy earplugs, non-alcoholic outfielders, well-scrubbed facades, salutes from visiting dignitaries, postcards from swimsuit models on location, swashbuckling tales of red-blooded adventure, hickeys from the candy-stripers, boot-cut jeans and neckerchiefs and rodeo clowns and transistor radios and souvenirs from Mount Rushmore and superfloppy discs and lawn gnomes and light fixtures and Bratwurst and pumpernickel and cubes of Tofurky and triangles of cheese and spheres of celestial light and lozenge-shaped UFOs - I want a wilderness of taco shells. I want no doubt, no contingency, no gray shades of ambiguity creeping across the terrain. I want deeper territories to explore - arks, Yetis, covenants, cyborgs, tidepools, wavelengths, cat people, zombie serums, pushpins, packrats, autodidacts, self-trained magicians, nail clippings and plucked eyebrows and baby pictures of celebrities, underwater volcanoes, mermaids in their glittering crystal kingdom, oatmeal monsters, saints on toast.

I want a cauldron big enough to cook all the beans in. I want tattoos that match the color of the drapes. I want spectacles and receptacles, torpedoes and Doritos, aardvarks and card sharks, chintzes and blintzes. I want a merry maid, a mad hatter, a mailing service, and a master of illusion. I want a hypnotherapist who will eliminate my earwigs, exfoliate my silverfish, and rehabilitate my fungus. I want a real estate who will water-heat my septic tank, flat-screen my funeral home, bag-mulch my car title, and professional my bone-dry Bermuda. I want a sound system that will soft drink my upholstery, drywall my compensation, burglar-bar my court reporter, sandpaper my groin injury, Jazzercise my lamentation, decal my pony ride, paintball my stump grinding, refrigerate my gazebo, hairpiece my wheelchair, yogurt my pet containment, and flea market my calligraphy. I want a psychiatrist who will hospitalize my stainless steel, aerially photograph my hypertension, vinyl side my animal dander, dermatology my grand piano, biofeedback my spider veins, domestic violence my head injury, eating disorder my enduring freedom, wart remove my deficit disorder, anger manage my blood blister, ultrasound my panic disorder, faith-heal my ingrown toenail, Tarot-card my learning disability, and slide-rule my mania. I want peace! I want disorder! I want palm readings! I want an end to electrolyte imbalances! I want low flush toilets! I want grief therapy! I want a breakfast sandwich that makes my heart explode immediately, upon impact! I want the countertops spic and span! I want the gutters free of debris and unsightly vagrants! I want the grits to go along with the gravy! I want the flash of gold in the green rushing water! I want the steam-shine gasoline rainbow in the heat! I want the fire in the wastebasket! I want the streak of silk in the skein of the tapestry! I want the peach juice running down my chin! I want the vision in the supermarket! I want the last lightning-bug in the dim-bulb South! I want armadillos, avocados, and immortality! I want the chamberedest of the nautiluses! I want the whole furious expanse of the land and every ounce of authenticity within it! I want the Great Pumpkin and the Horned God! I want the songbird and the magpie! I want the Muse in her diaphanous gown! I want the great divide! I want the unsurveyable territory! I want an ice sculpture of my only love! I want the secret of the passing planet. I want the hair plucked from Beethoven’s head. I want the true relic of the holy God. I want a muffler that will not fail me. I want the land that never was.

Jeff Fallis

Mike Landers

Jeff Fallis (poem) and Mike Landers (photo) both live in Athens. Fallis’ poems have appeared in The Oxford American, The Iowa Review, Indiana Review, Seneca Review, Quarterly West, Pulse Berlin, the Arkansas Review, the Everyman’s Library anthology Blues Poems and Ploughshares. See more of Landers’ work online at www.mikelanders.com.