GREETINGS FROM SYRACUSE
All postcards say, I wish you were here; but I don’t.
You’d be bored here. There’s nothing to do,
and plenty of it. Boredom is habit forming. Besides,
you’ve known folks going where you can’t,
then bragging upon it—like they were something
and you ain’t. Come on. I know you’re thinking that.
Those people are not all that monumental. All cards
proclaim the same exact mumble-jumble, yada, yada.
Wish you were here, blah, blah, blah. As if you care.
You want to send them a finger in the mail,
but the post office lists fingers as hazardous material.
So, here’s a postcard that doesn’t wish you were here
where you can watch factories turn to rust. That
and a nickel still leaves you two cents too short.
Drawing by Martin Willitts, Jr.
—from Rattle #68, Summer 2020
Tribute to Postcard Poems
__________
Martin Willitts Jr.: “As a person who lives in Syracuse, I thought I might warn others not to visit. I thought about postcards I have received. I decided to create an Alice in Wonderland card. We see less sunshine than Nome, Alaska! We have 50 shades of grey! If we see the sun, we’re stupefied. We think we get a tan during a snowstorm. I have even made a miserable cartoon for the postcard front. Even our artwork looks like three-year-old children could do better.”
