Lucky Strikes
Our classroom in the old building
was carpeted and the only window
was of an upturned slab-shape
easily covered from the big rolls
of colored butcher paper stored
in the dim hallway. Our children came
one day a week from 16 schools, they gifted
our individually-administered oral tests said,
classes small, from 9 to 18 or 19.
We’d turn off the lights and lie on the floor
on our backs listening to Cassette tape
of an old 1940s radio program, “Suspense,”
I think, not my own childhood joy,
“Inner Sanctum” with its horrible creak
of an opening door. The story was called
“Sorry, Wrong Number,” a one-woman show
recorded by Agnes Moorehead. We watched
ourselves turned to terror by sound alone
and our own sensation-deprived brains,
an hour of group-think and bonding.
The old tape, though, began with a ubiquitous
thought-shaping commercial: “Doctors recommend
Lucky Strikes three to one.” The ad appealed
to ladies admiring the sultry puffs on screen
of Joan Crawford or Lauren Bacall.
and to veterans addicted by free cigarette
handouts to combat-facing troops.
Lucky us, though, together,
thinking, wondering …. how far
can just words go.