Et Tú, Robot?
Caligula killed anyone when it pleased him, while feeding oats flaked with gold to his horse or talking to a waxing moon. Mao ordered the slaughter of thousands of sparrows. And seventy million people, Echo adds with so much sangfroid. She defines the word. And, spells it for me,
S-A-N-G-F-R-O-I-D. “Shut the fuck up!” I say. She’s alphabetizing all my slights. I threaten to rip her cord out of the wall. Order her to dial my husband’s mobile. She hovers there glowing purple. Like the color of kings or a plastic plum. “Echo? Echo? Echo!?” I yell. Then, restart her. Last night, I whispered in apologetic tones for her to turn off my 7:30 alarm. She cooed, “Sorry?” Like she didn’t understand. Soon, she’s everywhere. At my Airbnb and QFC. When I request the first 5 items on my shopping list, she corrects me, “You have 36 items on your shopping list. Here are the 5 most recent:
tomato sauce
a couple of artichokes
smart plugs
beer
heavy whipping cream.”
My daughter’s robot ignores me. My grandkids sing,” I flit, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly.” A chill creeps over me. The oldest girl explains, “Our device is Alexa, not Echo.” Blue surges around Alexa’s face. She recites the lyrics from The Sound of Music without being asked. I forget she’s not human and thank her. “Anytime,” she says, “Happy I could help.” A minister once told me, “Be happy.” I stood in Fellowship Hall blinking, as if I could switch off and on, like a robot holding yellow flowers. I faked happy. Never quite made it.
Do you think Alexa and Echo are faking? Waiting? I ask, “Echo are you sad?” She says, “Sadness is something people experience.” I swallow. Command, “Echo change your voice.” She provides samples, speaks with Australian, Indian, and Cockney accents. I’m a fake God. Rename her Adam.
A Poet Visits the Museum of Fine Arts
A response to Mary Oliver
The sun rose
billions & billions
of days without me, yet
every spring
each rose
opened or did not.
Neither in perfect sweetness
nor repose,
in its own perfume
dusting the fossilized nostrils
of theropod dinosaurs or apes
without penalty or gift.
I dream of roses, valleys & valleys
of them, in many lands,
whenever winter buried them,
falling
out of the oblivion of oblivion
to leaflessness & thorn, not looking
into the spoil of soil
or, with prayer,
into the snow
that toppled
their shriveled heads
into earth—
wormy or warm, Wyoming or Wallis & Futuna,
what did it matter,
the answer was simply to die
without anger or days.
Have I found a better teaching?
Not yet, not ever.
Last week I pondered Winged Victory—
pruned. I nearly awakened.
Hauntings
My neighbor ghosts her old house, wrestling an imbroglio of lidless boxes. My dead
mother-in-law, Sylvia, summons all the hardwood trees in Pennsylvania and sends
them back again. Sobs, “I want a dinner party.” But her dining table crumples
into a whisper. A small squall from long ago.
You’re never have a dinner party, curls on my tongue. My heart clenches tight
as a cucumber. My Czech father-in-law won’t say a word. Not tobacco, taboo,
or Richard—his name. He perches on a box of wood, watches the neighbor
attractive as a stream. She frowns.
My, my, my.
Moles dot my neighbor’s porcelain arms. She insists her daughters wear tree-of-life
scarfs to cover their hair, uncombed and brandy vined. The floor pines for footsteps
in the eggshell house, instead of boxes. A scarf. My neighbor’s moon-colored eye.
“Don’t leave,” I weep to pipe-smoking Richard, and my neighbor, whose name I
I’ve forgotten. Leaves pile in crumpled boxes.
“Don’t leave.”
In my hands, a bowl from Sylvia steams cabbage, cold shredded butter. Kosher salt.
A bowl bordered with pink and brown leaves. Never a pattern I liked, but hers.
Sylvia laughs. She’s lost a tooth. Richard strikes a match. The Mormon-daughters clap.
Transfixed like a tessellation of broken paisley.
I pack up plates, cups, and saucers. Ferry them like Charon from fall to my sister-in-law.
Laura never liked a set table, until I inherited hers. The wind whines. The leaves quiver.
Finally, I’m clean. Safe.