Regular Poem: Amateur Casting Agent

Delta Burke
is already playing you
in the Lifetime Movie of this event
playing out in my mind.

She’s thrashing through the set,
southern accent in Florida hurricane force,
Emmy-winning scenery chewing–
and it’s not just chewing;
it’s full devouring:
mastication, swallowing, digesting–
rambling monologues
strewn over several scenes
picking up and putting down
at jarring angles,
forced haphazardly into
other dialogue
and other scenes
disjointed and mysterious,
nonsensical but somehow satisfying diatribes,
testing the very fibers
of suspension of disbelief,
drawing taut the fibers
of vicarious rage.

By the end
(and you know how Lifetime Movies end:
all Suburbans crashing through bungalows
and women in dark glasses walking away from burning warehouses)
there’s no scenery even left.

It’s just Delta Burke
and the camera’s cold gaze
and a commercial for next week’s
Battered Army Moms at Christmas
or whatever.

But come on, lady.
At least I didn’t cast
Valerie Bertinelli
as you.
Then you’d never have
forgiven me.

But of course
I couldn’t
because
she was tied up with
Battered Army Moms at Christmas.