POETRY

By Charles Byrne

even pre-prepan­dem­ic, we were bubbled: Netflix- & Amazon sealed: pix­e­lat­ed minis­cule-screen freeze-frames: air encir­cled in  plastic air bubbles with a tiny black box at the bottom: dis­crete  behav­ior­ist levers to parcel out the dopamine drip: our secure  little bubbles: gossip is thirty-mile zoning about those who may be  sib­lings from god but you do not know from Adam: pol­i­tics is cable  news net­work­ing your enemy of God: they are no longer the  domain of the cold-coffee Blooms­bury cof­fee­house: the coffee cer­e­mo­ny in Addis Ababa: the tea­house in Bursa: the wine table  in Babylon: not to mention the mere good-neigh­bor fence:  memes jour­neyed then but ambled at a mea­sured pace: now  micro-units of adren­a­line are admin­is­tered as quickly as the ones  & zeros can be trans­mit­ted from your enemy’s tweet-finger: we  were once bot­tle­necked to hand­fuls of breed­ing pairs: then our  pop­u­la­tion dipped only during the undu­la­tions of the Black  Death: all other times tra­vers­ing skyward: twice as many alive as  when I was born: froth­ing over into every inhab­it­able nook &  cranny: genes tra­verse the world & viruses catch a ride: the  nearer we get to one another the further we retreat inside: like  the polite­ness of the Tokyo subway: the mere thought of touch  feels like cor­rup­tion now: but many crave the skin-on-skin of  when we party like it’s 2024: or more accu­rate­ly the per­ceived  skin-to-skin touch that is the mind’s inter­pre­ta­tion of elec­tron  repul­sion: but the hook-up is our secure little bubble too: our  effort to retreat from the Universe’s expanse: to split it into  man­age­able parts however illu­so­ry: even pre-post­pan­dem­ic one  senses it: the pain that is pre­dictable trumps the pain that  wanders.

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 19. Support local book­sellers and inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers by order­ing a print copy of the mag­a­zine.

Photo by Zoran Borojevic