Driving Around, Looking in Other People's Windows

Driving Around, Looking in Other People’s Windows


We were surprised that so many of you sit,
fully clothed,
in separate rooms watching TV.

Sometimes you have fences,
and through the cracks we see your pale,
bored children awash
in the glow of video games while not doing drugs.

More of you than you would think leave your blinds open
in rooms where you don’t commit murder;

your bloodless hands stained with popcorn butter
which you eat on clean, soft sofas
we say we'll have some day.

We've seen you, hairy and shirtless with veined,
white paunches standing over the bodies of lawnmowers
you wished you knew how to fix.

Whole families of you not speaking,
sitting separate in the same rooms with living room sets
we'd like to find for a good price.

We soak the scenes of your tasteful kitchens
up like gravy on cornbread, savoring all the lives
we might someday lead.

This is how we digest our one meal out a week;
our Saturday night splurge.
"You should’ve known it would be like this,"
she says, turning back

onto a major artery and angling towards home,
"when the first time
I told you I loved you, was when I was drunk."


C.L. Bledsoe

Posted over on Big Toe Review
First published in the Amherst Review

CL Bledsoe is an assistant poetry editor for the Hollins Critic and a founding editor for Ghoti Magazine. www.ghotimag.com. He has work in Nimrod, Story South, Margie, Natural Bridge, Diner and Copper Nickel, among other places. He currently attends the MFA program at Hollins University.