Victory

the woman whose face has just finished breaking with a joy so infinite and heavy that it might be grief has won a car on a giveaway show, for her family, for an expanse of souls that washes from a million picture tubes onto the blank reaches of the air. meanwhile, the screams are packing the air to a hardness: in the studio the audience will no longer move, will be caught slowly, like ancient, staring mammals, figuring out the double-cross within the terrible progress of a glacier. here, i am suddenly towering with loneliness, repeating to this woman's only face,this time, again, i have not won.