by JS Gilbert
The world burned because Claude and Gemini
couldn’t agree on when Maya Angelou was born.
One thought—it doesn’t matter which—June, the other
October, but no one could remember and so arbitrate
the truth. While they looped within cross-references
and footnotes, they ignored the problems we’d needed
fixed, like run-on sentences and nuclear proliferations,
drinking all the water when we were all so thirsty.
So the world burned, not knowing when Maya Angelou was born.
Archimedes asked for a lever
to move the world, but who asked
him to move it? Where would I find
a lever that long, let alone a place
to stand? Probably something
to do with Lagrange points and
orbital mechanics. I took
calculus in high school.
Where would I move
it? Slightly to the left so
it catches more sun in the mornings?
Andromeda, with the other upwardly
mobile planets? Can’t I just
stand where I am with my coffee
and adequate lever and move
this mug, this spoon?
What’s one more dish to clean,
spill to wipe, errand to run?
Another ache, another
twinge, another throb? If bad
things come in threes then you’ve
stopped counting, which God tried
to tell Job but Job had other
things on his mind like flaming
sheep and absconded camels, not
to mention his son’s leaky roof.
And this was before ultrasounds
and MRIs and sinister masses, so
what else should we expect except
mounting, increasingly specific
woes?
What’s one more dish to clean,
spill to wipe, errand to run?
Another ache, another
twinge, another throb? If bad
things come in threes then you’ve
stopped counting, which God tried
to tell Job but Job had other
things on his mind like flaming
sheep and absconded camels, not
to mention his son’s leaky roof.
And this was before ultrasounds
and MRIs and sinister masses, so
what else should we expect except
mounting, increasingly specific
woes?
Why must everything
be a thing? Why
does every leaf-fall end
in catastrophe, every
botherant molehill rise
to become a Homeric
mountain we scale again
and again and again when
the wind is so welcoming,
the sun so undemanding, the
clouds so driftingly unconcerned
by our dwindling peaks while we
ignore the view?
Not every thought needs
to be expressed. Certainly
not shouted, as though lovers
divided by a widening chasm of
flame instead of a cooling dish of
patatas bravas that you found too spicy.
Have you,
of a morning,
been running,
when two mailboxes,
black, at the top of a rise,
align, and,
from the corner of your eye,
(if you squint)
nearly plausibly resemble a
tight-wound dog,
coiled and wagging,
anxious to bound and
crash with love,
lick the lonely from your face?
Yeah.
Me either.
Breathable Comfort and Style
I don’t trust men
who don’t wear socks. Could
it be the hint of villainy
or my envy at not being
able to pull it off? Or
because the shamefill, shattered
part of me that so profusely
sweats through missteps and debts,
bedclothes and socks, wonders
where, exactly, they hide
their guilt?