Portobello mushroom sestina
(a reply to an Emersonian headache sestina he has not read)
Things I am learning: how the street is plenty. I can unmute
it, just by opening the windows! Oh, technology! I feel so abled
despite everything… You’ll be thanking the gentrifiers
now, wherever you are, back in your city of volcanos
perhaps, where the virus came and went like a Portobello
mushroom season…You always were quite the spokesmodel
for your city, but then you were quite the spokesmodel
for everything you touched, always unmute
and unmuteable, about everything, my Portobello
mushrooms making you laugh irrepressibly, enabled
by the dog nipping at my hand on your mouth, a volcano’s
burst of laughter erupting forth, calling me a gentrifier
for buying mushrooms! Why do mushrooms make me a gentrifier?
Things I am learning: to let things go. A spokesmodel
for non-erupting volcanos,
that’s me. Even if my thoughts unmute
themselves in my head. Who would I be abled
to speak them to anyway? The Portobello
mushrooms in the fridge? Yes, I still buy Portobello
mushrooms! So call me a gentrifier!
(In my head.) Somehow you are still abled
in my head, by my head, to be the spokesmodel
of all the ideas I ever thought you had, unmute
despite our distance, which, if you did return to your volcanos,
is very distant indeed. City of volcanos
or city of a thousand lovers, you called it, eating the Portobello
mushrooms you laughed at, and with gusto, and as unmute
as always. Believe it or not, I did love you. Gentrifier
though you called me, I loved you, my spokesmodel
for chaos and mess and decay, as much as I was able. Or abled.
Or a-bled, like a wound. Truly, you had me a-bled,
a-bruised, as ashy and dazzled as if caught in a volcano’s
eruption…I’ll send you a note in a bottle and let the sea be spokesmodel
for my pain, or instead of a note I’ll seal up a Portobello
mushroom to wash up on your shore, a gentrifier’s
desperate cry, a silent cartoon you can’t unmute.
In this crisis you are still my crisis, my spokesmodel for volcanos…
If I were only able to know that you were okay, unmute,
laughing, even if it were at the joke of some other Portobello-eating gentrifier…
(a reply to an Emersonian headache sestina he has not read)
Things I am learning: how the street is plenty. I can unmute
it, just by opening the windows! Oh, technology! I feel so abled
despite everything… You’ll be thanking the gentrifiers
now, wherever you are, back in your city of volcanos
perhaps, where the virus came and went like a Portobello
mushroom season…You always were quite the spokesmodel
for your city, but then you were quite the spokesmodel
for everything you touched, always unmute
and unmuteable, about everything, my Portobello
mushrooms making you laugh irrepressibly, enabled
by the dog nipping at my hand on your mouth, a volcano’s
burst of laughter erupting forth, calling me a gentrifier
for buying mushrooms! Why do mushrooms make me a gentrifier?
Things I am learning: to let things go. A spokesmodel
for non-erupting volcanos,
that’s me. Even if my thoughts unmute
themselves in my head. Who would I be abled
to speak them to anyway? The Portobello
mushrooms in the fridge? Yes, I still buy Portobello
mushrooms! So call me a gentrifier!
(In my head.) Somehow you are still abled
in my head, by my head, to be the spokesmodel
of all the ideas I ever thought you had, unmute
despite our distance, which, if you did return to your volcanos,
is very distant indeed. City of volcanos
or city of a thousand lovers, you called it, eating the Portobello
mushrooms you laughed at, and with gusto, and as unmute
as always. Believe it or not, I did love you. Gentrifier
though you called me, I loved you, my spokesmodel
for chaos and mess and decay, as much as I was able. Or abled.
Or a-bled, like a wound. Truly, you had me a-bled,
a-bruised, as ashy and dazzled as if caught in a volcano’s
eruption…I’ll send you a note in a bottle and let the sea be spokesmodel
for my pain, or instead of a note I’ll seal up a Portobello
mushroom to wash up on your shore, a gentrifier’s
desperate cry, a silent cartoon you can’t unmute.
In this crisis you are still my crisis, my spokesmodel for volcanos…
If I were only able to know that you were okay, unmute,
laughing, even if it were at the joke of some other Portobello-eating gentrifier…
