You're So Vain
Craig Kirchner
I ask Alexa for the top hits of the sixties,
I’m getting in the shower,
she’s on the bathroom counter
and seems ill, no swirling lights,
no tunes, no Good Morning Craig, nothing.
I’m concerned that the tumult
of misinformation and violent rhetoric
on the internet has caused her
to have a stroke
or a nervous breakdown.
She just had an affair, and ugly breakup
with Roomba, but seemed OK with it:
we’ve Beatled through two showers
since then. A smart ass,
I ask her if she been drinking.
She’s plugged in, more than most,
she’s young, as she pointed out
when I asked her if she wanted to get married.
“I know I sound mature,
but I’m only two years old.”
I have trouble showering without requests.
Finally, she lights up,
like I’ve been forgiven, redeemed.
I ask for Satisfaction by the Stones,
she comes back with Carly Simon
and You’re so vain.
I’m getting in the shower,
she’s on the bathroom counter
and seems ill, no swirling lights,
no tunes, no Good Morning Craig, nothing.
I’m concerned that the tumult
of misinformation and violent rhetoric
on the internet has caused her
to have a stroke
or a nervous breakdown.
She just had an affair, and ugly breakup
with Roomba, but seemed OK with it:
we’ve Beatled through two showers
since then. A smart ass,
I ask her if she been drinking.
She’s plugged in, more than most,
she’s young, as she pointed out
when I asked her if she wanted to get married.
“I know I sound mature,
but I’m only two years old.”
I have trouble showering without requests.
Finally, she lights up,
like I’ve been forgiven, redeemed.
I ask for Satisfaction by the Stones,
she comes back with Carly Simon
and You’re so vain.
Craig Kirchner is retired and thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had three poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. He houses five hundred books in his office and about four hundred poems in a folder on a laptop. These words tend to keep him straight. After a writing hiatus, he has been published in Poetry Quarterly, Decadent Review, New World Writing, WordSwell, 7th Circle Pyrite, Ariel Chart, Blotter, Bombfire, Borderless Journal, Cape Magazine, Carolina Muse, Coneflower Café, Edge of Humanity, Fairfield Scribe, Fixator, Flora Fiction, Gas, Ginosko, Globe Review, Hamilton Stone Review, Impspired, Ink in Thirds, Journal of Expressive Writing, Kleksograph, Last Leaves, Last Stanza, Light Ekphrastic, Lit Shark, Literary Heist, Literary Yard, Loud Coffee, Medusa’s Kitchen, Moria, Neologism, Poetry Super Highway, Punk Monk, Quail Bell, Same Faces, Scab, Skinny, Spillwords, Scars. Sybil, The Argyle, The Lake, Timada’s Diary, Unbroken, Unlikely Stories, Valiant Scribe, Variety Pack, Versification, Wild Violet, Wise Owl, The Good Men, Witcraft, Lothlorien, Yellow Mama, Young Ravens, Arlington Literary, Glacial Hills Review, Your Impossible Voice, Mad Swirl, Oddball Mag, and work forthcoming at Poetry Breakfast, Muse India, Writers Resist, Rushing thru the Dark, Sparks of Calliope, Stereo Stories, Floyd County, Dark Winter, Gargoyle Magazine, Vine Leaf Press, Abstract, Chiron Review, Coffee and Conversation, Black Petal, Atrium, Constellations, Literary Journal, Stand, and The Main Street Rag.