Poem: Sims

 

Sims

 

it was easy to feel ankle-chained

to the neighborhood.

its transistor-like fences,

and pomeranian-sized lawns--

 

as if the will

of the residents suffered a hex. 

only fishbowls with their blobs of poi

trending nonlinear.

 

how to find voice

among cathodes and laminates?

no Muse braved this straight-laced

stratified oasis, except

 

once when a coyote

wormed under a construction fence.

 

wakes of worry

followed the beast’s deviant slouch,

fawning over every plump

cosseted cat.

 

no one could ever truly leave.

escape was circular.

they always returned, became

their own replaceable part.

 

women took up

the software of the smile again.

men shook hands as if gears had meshed,

a fingerworks of pawls.

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This poem was originally published in Ithaca Lit in 2014.  I am going to start re-publishing poems on this blog.  Why?  A big part of it is the end of the USA as I knew it, and my concern that I will be incarcerated.  I am, too, in my 60s, and could die of natural causes, exacerbated by grief and anxiety at the loss of the democracy and freedom I knew all my life.