Poetry
Cash Register Sings the Blues
This isn’t my dream job. As a young sheet
of steel and plastic, I dreamt of being melted
down into a dancer’s pole in Vegas. I wanted
a woman in a headdress glossy as a gossamer
to wrap her lithe limbs around me. I wanted
to be strewn in lights, smell her powdery perfume.
Instead, I’m a squat box crouched behind the counter,
noticed only if someone robs me. I’m touched all day,
but never caressed. Listen: somewhere, gold tokens
spew from slots. I want to drink space-alien-dyed martinis on black
leather sectional couches. Watch tipsy women with acid-
washed jeans and teased hair dreamily press their faces
against slot machines while people treat currency
carelessly as spit in the wind.
I’m everywhere you look, ubiquitous and ignored.
I’m the container of your dreams that tossed aside my own.
I’ve kept my clean, sleek lines, but you never say a thing.
Feed me, feed me with the only love we know.
Originally published in American Life in Poetry and The Poetry Foundation.
