on the decline of print media

The career counselors thought physician’s assistant or forester but I was born to this job like sturgeon.

My mechanic says cars are like people:

the oil’s always trying to find a way out—he beats off

twice a day in the utility sink.

The berry pickers heading home at dusk agree but it’s not oil, they say,

picking red clots from their feet,

it’s something else. It’s easy enough for them,

moving slowly in discolored robes, but I could never wait

so long for anything. At this speed shapes are baffled and missiles hover warily.

My composition coach treads in fear of modifiers but that’s

how they do it, I swear, warily. The architects guffaw.

That’s all we do is modify, they grin, turning back to their tables. Each night

they make love to someone who likes them less and less.

The journalists, my friends, have stopped taking notes. They are drawing their lions again; it’s impossible now

to get them to stop. We meet for drinks on Thursday nights

and an aproned man slaps an egg beater into his palm at the door. My friend,

says the editor, the earth doesn’t speak to us. We speak to each other and pretend it was the earth.

Then there isn’t much time, the berry pickers cry, squirting juice across the page.