after years with an iphone I got an android
I knew there would be challenges but now
I can’t even like a text message–
a nuance of correspondence gone
however
I am learning a new language
– you realize that’s what operating systems are, right?
they’re the way the brain of the device communicates
so
I’m learning a new language
and I am learning how to translate the actions of my fingers
and consequently my thoughts
so I can continue to communicate with the outside world…
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Mystery: Toothpaste smear on lower right of t-shirt, always the same location.
I mean I know how it gets there but, even to save my life, I can’t figure
out how to prevent it
*
I love Frisch’s Homo Faber. Bob the Builder (can’t stop), whether for need
or out of boredom. Perhaps giving up on one dream or another, but never giving up
on the “drawing board,” whose surface area is infinite (or so it seems). Multiplying
words (can’t stop), as though inching toward some ultimate “reality” or “truth.”
You’ll need the ultimate word when you get there
*
After giving in to the junk mail from Classpals (I paid for 3 months) and getting
Laura (real or bot) to straighten out my old account (they had me in Reading
SH PA instead of Reading HS MI), I looked at all the “hellos” (from people
I never knew) and uploaded some pics from our trip to St Ives
As I was going to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives …
*
I took my nephew Armand to Taco Hell to celebrate something, I don’t know what.…
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In the hay-heavy summer, the boys tossed rocks
under the horses’ legs to ease their uphill climbs,
nearby: three sisters, land-weary.
I came rarely, a visitor, crossing the river dense
with silt and passing through the wild-strawberried woods.
We were careless girls.
For a snack we ate bread and butter, white sugar
granulating the surface. We cracked eggs into the sawdust
under the cool air of the barn.
When K. began her parabolic descent — a kerchief
over her fragmenting strands of hair: I was, no longer,
the same visitor. How difficult
to learn of emergencies.
– Alicja Zapalska
Author’s Note: This poem is a distillation of many years’ worth of visits to the countryside of Poland as a child. As someone removed from the toil that comes from a livelihood dependent on the land, this poem splits between the back-breaking work required of children and the frivolity we allowed ourselves in brief moments.…
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I grew up in the countryside,
on a farm with the nearest
neighbor a quarter mile away.
Every night the stars shone like
unreachable precious jewels
adorning eternity– and I felt
very, very small and yet,
strangely, also very, very old
and more, oh, so much more
than my daytime self drunk
on the petty and the mundane.
Now I live on a quarter acre
with neighbors on my left and
neighbors on my right and
neighbors across the street and
a big city so near it cloaks even
the light of stars at night and
I am left only with the memory
of eternity….
– L.j. Carber…
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After our argument I’m not ready to
be the one to make the first move
back to our comfort station
but I did buy a bag of your
beloved M & M’s
believing we will have sweet again
still my anger keeps me naming the
M’s in the waiting bag
monsters and morons
manipulators and mangles
manners and maturity
monkeys and manatees
then I remember how
thrilled you were to show me
the monkey you found
hugging the tree
I remember snorkeling together
giddily discovering the manatee
playing with his mother so close
to our hand holding space
is that you I hear coming
to my closed door
have an M & M
my most maddening
marvelous much-loved
magical man
– Susan Shea…
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The child takes us Mason-jarring
out where the backyard meets the woods
Soon each jar contains a nondescript black beetle
of uncertain entomology duly given
a name such as ours
At supper call we two adults assure
that Mike and Ike and Lucy are released
back into their usual less confining environment
and forgotten
Freedom is a simple gift to give another
yet if I were to be kept anywhere
I would prefer a grownup girl’s memory of me
to a Mason jar
as like Ike Black-Beetle
I crawl the world’s backyard
under or over blades of grass taller than me
hiding from sun and sparrow
– Russell Rowland…
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The role allows him to charge into windmills
with a sly smile: was it a mistake?
He cultivates this persona
with people who don’t expect much from him,
this clumsy gentle giant with soft brown skin.
And when he messes up and smiles
they all laugh:
“Oh, Monster.”
And help him with his errors and work.
Monster cultivates this persona
with people who don’t expect much from him—
they happen to always be White—
because Monster knows they can see his size and skin
in two ways: threat or pet.
He chooses pet
because it’s something he knows
because he doesn’t know what he is with others like him but not
because he doesn’t know what he is
and the idea of being himself,
not acting a part, even as a fool,
is terrifying.…
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