Flatworld
Everything was expensive that summer.
Even foodstamps.
She worked in a pic processing office where they tallied up
available benefits in chalk every month and you
got to choose. She chose poetry.
"Better than yachting!" she quipped. At first
she thought her boss had smiled.
But boss just swayed in a holding pattern,
the way videogame characters do when they're idling.
(To give you your money's worth.)
On her space page at home she wrote a memory log
of all the supplements they gave her
as a kid ("Monodeitine? One word: G-R-O-S-S.")
She wasn't loved, she wrote, not "truely."
It all got smooshed into a story of revenge:
the man, why a man?, stood on the battlements
of the city. Give me the knife, he said. Instead
they argued. She dreamed she wrote it down,
then woke up in the dream
and wrote it down, then woke up.
It was too processed. But wow, she tingled before it fizzled!
She was such a genius in this dream.
She was sure of it.
The perfect little icon
under the skysaver.
Gross.
– -- Ana Božičević
Comments