An Encounter (poem)

 

 

 

An Encounter

 

Memory teaches us data contours the planet

We thought we had minds of our own and there

In fiber and grit, in fountaining microbeads

Unwanted papers sticking to our hands

Things that mix themselves among the needed

Photoprint generic family members with the better smiles

Of thinner people

Alba collect themselves on hooks by doors and

Days traced by routes trail the cloud of parts of us

Racking miles of presences untallied, skin and hair

And halls that lead to stairs

Dollars when we give them up turn crime on its ear

Make borrowers live on the canny dodge and bleat of pathos

Poverty live on barter and squatting at your house

Cash money given up for mental constructs

I think, and if I think of shopping, therefore

I lose no time, make dictatorial minor covetings

Or well-divided from the minute past

Am not the loser…cause, no more to do with that

Remind me, speaker, is there a word for the reason

Banks won’t lend me or another of my identities

The credit I have coming

I am anyone buying cashmere and the latest heel

Crafted to be shelved and sardonically revered

Forgotten treks in forgotten weathers yester-jingling-years

Oh, I’m forgetting another thing, speaker

Can you tell me a story of courage and odyssey

 

All of them, any

Those I don’t know, I find

And foretell the fate of marquee names

Plug in predictive probabilities of Things

 

Tell me comfort then, impersonal implacable

Floods and famines buildings falling

Figures burning

None now living know

 

 

 

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An Encounter

Uncollected Poems

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2019, Stephanie Foster)