THE STEGER Prize For Poetry
A Lonely Nation
by Monica Lee Sawaya
My sister lives in New York City, where new faces never end.
So how is it that in a whole year she hasn’t made one friend?
She says, “Here, people don’t have friends. They either walk with a dog or an iPod.”
No one takes the time to give a smile or a nod.
So she walks with her eyes on the concrete and stone. And when she eats, she eats alone.
My friend from high school doesn’t go to college, but he always watches a TV show.
What productive things he could have been doing, is something he’ll never know.
But he sits and passively takes it all in, and leaves the show no different than he began.
He doesn’t care what he does with his life, suppose he’ll make money however he can.
As a media’s values take over his own, he sits on the couch and eats alone.
My roommate stares at her laptop all day, playing games like Solitaire.
It keeps her mind off the fact that she wishes a real friend was there.
The screen gives her something to do, maybe even get excited about;
But on a bad day she realizes real friends aren’t something she can do without.
So she talks to people from home on the phone. But when she eats, she eats alone.
At night I used to babysit a four year old boy who had a computer in his room.
He spent hours each day learning the kindergarten basics through an interactive program.
What happened to the day when a real person, like his parents, would sit with him
And personally teach him the difference between a dog and a lamb?
Though he’s learning, he socially hasn’t grown, so at school when he eats, he’ll eat alone
“She” goes to the gym with the headphones to her Nano in her ears as she begins to run.
Through her struggle with anorexia, she lives in a dark hole and cannot see the sun.
All she really needs is for someone to care,
But the reality is that only here Nano is there.
So while the treadmill is her throne, she doesn’t eat, and feels alone.
My grandmom gets her personal fulfillment from emailing on Web-TV.
This is her imaginary relation to people that in five years she’ll never see.
And she gets a quick response to an email letter,
But who’s to say that faster is better?
She has more connections than I’ve ever known. But when she eats, she eats alone.
Several times a day I log onto Facebook and MySpace
But I haven’t even met half these “friends” face to face.
And if one hundred people write messages on my Facebook or MySpace wall,
I wouldn’t feel loved, not even a little, not even at all.
So because these pictures aren’t flesh and bone, when I sit here and eat, I eat alone.
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