Eventually, the business of the entire world
was done by ACCEPTED or DECLINED.
A woman would have a baby
and within minutes she’d be handed a legal form
with checkboxes for ACCEPTED or DECLINED.
Before gangbangers could shoot at
random people during drive-bys,
the targets would have to hold up one finger
signifying ACCEPTED or two fingers
denoting DECLINED.
Dating would be outlawed.
A random man would approach a random
woman and say: “How about it?”
And she would bare one breast for ACCEPTED
and, in a spirit of consummate irony,
both breasts for DECLINED.
Brain tumors couldn’t just take a hammer
and chisel and gouge their way into a skull.
No, they’d have to ask politely: “Sir,
would you like a glioblastoma multiforme?”
And the man would nod once for
ACCEPTED and twice for DECLINED.
Even death, which Dear Emily couldn’t stop for,
yet which chased her down
like a Catholic Priest in a mosh pit
of naked prepubescent boys,
would have to ask, “Emily, the carriage
is out for a run. What do you say?”
And Emily would hold up her labor
for ACCEPTED and her leisure for DECLINED.
restores vintage audio components for a living. His poems have appeared in numerous
journals, including Bloodroot, California Quarterly, Centrifugal Eye, City Works,
Comstock Review, Gloss: A Journal of Poetry, Pearl, Rattapallax, Spillway,
and Stirring. He has a sonnet forthcoming in the formalist journal, Able
Muse. He thinks too many contemporary poems hide behind their words. But
shhh!—don’t tell anyone.