Living in Pittsburgh, February 1 2009

our city’s football team
(the one on the gridiron, not the pitch)
has some far-reaching fingers that
tickle
ivories all over the country,

so when they qualified to play
in the final game of the season-
the "super bowl"-
the residents here
were pretty tickled
and those
all over the country
were tickled too!

i was watching television this morning,
and i had no idea those fingers stretched
so far, into such foreign things
as these icelandic cheerleaders on television

high school girls, they looked like, with what was
clearly an icelandic accent
(i know what that is from listening to bjork of course)
and they were cheering for us
S T
E E
L E
R S
go steelers!

how incredible, i thought, that even high school cheerleaders
in iceland
where they have no use for gridirons
these girls just want to
you know
support the city!  how amazing we must be!

but then the commercial ends
and it’s just from the pittsburgh school
of the deaf

i experience a range of emotions