Prize

by Rich Glinnen

My wife wound up making, what I thought,
was a device to safely view the eclipse
without damaging your eyes,
because four different stores were sold out
of the special viewing glasses.

But, in fact, it was just a projector, composed of
a Cheerios box, tape, a pin, and tin foil.

It works like this:
you turn your back to the phenomenon,
let the eclipsing sun shine whatever it has left
into the pinhole made in the tin foil,
and watch the spectacle’s shadow
in the bottom of the cereal box:
a tiny dot slowly whittling
into a cat’s nail.

At some climactic moment, it might seem like
you are looking at an empty cereal box.
Tsk-tsk.
You are actually experiencing
what you’ve been waiting all week for: Totality.

All in all, it felt like I was being punished
for waiting to buy the Magic Glasses until the day of
by being relegated to the cheap seats,
while my elderly neighbors were sitting orchestra,
each taking in the upstaged sun
from their shadow-washed lawn chairs,
passing a pair of glasses between them.

Don’t tell anybody, but I did sneak a peek,
repurposing the “projector” as a visor.
My eyes don’t hurt too much.
They might not even hurt at all.
It could just be the worrying that’s making them ache.
But I did catch a glimpse of the eclipse,
and I got to say,
it belonged in the bottom of a cereal box.

Best of the Net nominee and Nuyorican Poets Café mainstay, Rich Glinnen, has had his poetry featured on Washington Square on Air, Eastern Shore Writers Association, and My Wife Hates Me. His work can be read in over 100 print and online journals, as well as in his debut poetry collection Front to Back (PGN Publishing).