She Says I Should Try It
There’s a good chance all this
pushing electrons around comes to nothing.
Odds stacked like junk mail—still, here I am,
fingers on the keyboard,
small-time criminal trying to spark
a live wire in the dark.
Guessing the radius of a hummingbird’s wingspan,
tiny engines thrumming against the wind
and chance—
sometimes it has to be enough: staying alive, curious,
sticking around on this dumb rock another day.
Every morning I scare myself sideways,
arms windmilling through the network airwaves,
patterns I'd never choose—would never wear
on a blouse, would never endorse on a ballot—
but a body in a republic needs covering.
Prudence and his counterpart need costumes.
And the pervs at the loom never stop
selling bolts of period-colored cloth,
cotton picked from whatever’s
fashionably oppressive that season.
Please forgive
the generalizations—
maybe they fail—but this
is the texture under my fingernails,
as enduring as the Giza Pyramid complex,
the grit behind my teeth. I am so disappointed.
God, I am. The boogeyman broke his mask; turns
out he’s human, only human, so human he’ll complain
about ice ratios in a fountain drink handed through a window.
And what’s one person to do
but tune intentions, clean hollow bones,
watch birds fly backward to keep their wings
from getting chewed by turbines
while the world groans forward anyway?
Meanwhile I’m shouting don’t eat that
to my mother on her birthday
as she plucks red berries
I know are poison, scrolling Facebook,
thumb poised to love an AI photo.
I keep screaming, but she doesn’t hear me.
Swears it’s fruit, swallows, says delicious.
Then asks if I’ve gotten the Sphinx’s autograph,
asks about whether
I’ve solved the riddle of existence.
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