Summer asphalt, I feel it against my cheek, warm with embarrassment and sun’s absorption, after toe snags into pothole and I tumble face first into the road’s crosswalk. This, while holding two Slurpees in July, neither spills, miracle of frozen blue sugar ice. Honking cars and trucks applaud, recognizing my brief journey from sky to ground, entertainment while waiting for red to turn to green. I rise slowly, take a small bow, try to grin, clutch the drinks and walk again.
Month: June 2023
The Screen Reaper
The screen reaper has taken all the books away. The ones we used to read by the fireplace, or on the rug, or in bed, or underneath a tree. The screen reaper doesn’t care about your memories or narrative works assembled on page after page, plots, characters, all those stories shaped in your head. No, instead it offers the everything/nothing, of videos, tv shows, movies, colorful clothes draped on dancing bodies, never-ending updates, snap maps, instagram images, and tiktok temptations. The screen reaper wants it all, all of you, your eyes, brain, mind, and time.
And most of us never fight back, we open the computer, clutch the clicker, scroll with our very own fingers, authors of our demise. The screen reaper has taken all the books away, and yet we let it stay, perhaps forever, it will be this way.
Boston Logan
Does everyone dislike the airport? Or, am I alone staring at Dunkin’ signs with glazed eyes wondering if this what we all want, Starbucks and the Potbelly Sandwich Shop, slurping a Diet Coke, while glancing at an iPhone screen. I suppose this is it, the pinnacle of humanity, to be able to listen to Little Red Corvette on a loudspeaker, while gnawing on a “free” Quaker Chewy granola bar, waiting to board a delayed JetBlue flight.
Psalm 46
Ivy League
Harvard University
Hudson in Boston
Chinatown Boston
Middlesex Woods
Daniel W. Polk 