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Page 169

Perhaps newspapers (All the News that We Deserve) do try
to be "objective" (the quotation marks clinging like leeches
to that word -- they won't be shaken off), but why
is one thing news and not another. Had you ever before
taken the breath you just took? (If so, that's news indeed!
If this poem is breathtaking, relax, breathe deep, reread.)

At state fairs (more common than fair states) and Penny Arcades
(that have not for decades heard of pennies) there are machines
that will print an authentic-looking front page
with headlines and photos you provide. I'd suggest
a newspaper full of, mostly, blank pages with "Your
story here," "Your photo here," "Your obituary here" --

but these days, with pot in every chick and a personal website
for every user, we can each create our own daily news --
look, Ma, no paper! By God, we can ALL be ob-fucking-jective!
(The "fucking" scared the quotation marks away,
fluttering like moths disturbed by a just-missed swat.)

But can we create our own new day? Or even our own
nude, eh? There's nothing new under the sun
and little nude in these skin-cancer-wary summers.
How do you like it up here, over the sun?
We can drop our newspapers into it for fuel,
for though we cannot make our sun stand still,
we can make it run.

The only new paper I see is blank. I age it
with old, reliable words. This is not the news.
This is the Olds (and I don't mean the car).
Read All About It! The old made new
in my oldspaper.

Note: Line one mocks "All the news that's fit to print", some rag's motto (is it the NY Times?).

"Though we cannot make our sun stand still, we can make it run" echoes the close of Andrew Marvell's poem "To His Coy Mistress to Make Much of Time."

"The old made new" is a way one might describe poetry.

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