The Call Center Dreams of O. Hunt

Telephones ringing like fireflies flashing —chaotically at the beginning of each work shift when you mount your cubical chair spinning it around coming up heads over tails Tones on Tail playing from cassette tape an old Walkman left by your time-stagnant predecessor Firefly phones flash in unison now Plug earbud into right ear and then slip headset microphone earpiece over left ear Switch on incoming calls an unfamiliar voice floods your brain Conversations piggy- back each other over each other into a chain of checkboxes checked into breaks out back coffee, talk, snacks and then you're peering back at yourself from restroom mirrors while coworkers come and go You lock in the darkest spot in your colorblind amber eyes myopia dissolves away away away Sand on the beach warms your bare toes Each one loving the warm cushion as dry turns to moist turns to wet and the little waves are lapping happy feet ankles calves Sun is the solution a forward thinker flanked by friends on a dreamy sun- day-to-day the work is gone Call center background crashing tele- phones calling no more away away away dissolving in salt- water @kshawnedgar

Sick Poets

Sick Poets

If ever there was a time for the sick poets, it is now.

Too many people inhabit Earth. We need to reduce the population. To tears? To zero? To a 1970's level? Should we offshore the homeless to the moon Europa? Or a giant space station in orbit? Or perhaps relocate the wealthy to Mars...?

The answer to all of these questions is no. Or, well, maybe. The rich to Mars, anyway. No, it's no. The answer is no. We need a comprehensive disease, one to affect all people. One to unite them in the close quarters of overpopulation. We need to inflict everyone with the sickness of poetry. Poetry will render every person with the domain of infinite space and time.

Each man, woman, and child a king of infinite space, you ask? Yes, in close quarters. In the beautiful openness of the poetic word and phrase. Yes, in Hamlet's metaphoric nutshell, humans may survive the future.