by Jennifer Ruth Jackson
We crack spines, easy as eggs, and point to random definitions
in the dictionary—ask for correlations between Latin roots
and Greek. Keys to express our disordered selves wind
through passages of The Odyssey. Our love discomfited
with accusing jabs at Jane Eyre. E-readers (ineffective)
keep turning our pages onwards . . . futures lost
in half-deciphered prose. We fear probes and prods
of slick, slimy poetry that won’t tell us truth
since everything possible is negotiable and slant
between stanzas. A comma is a pause or itself an end.
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