A POET MARKED HIMSELF SAFE.

 
Some of the partygoers had slurped down the Jell-O Shots. Some, the dishwasher pods. Amid the ensuing knee and elbow chaos, the projectile hiccoughs, and the bicycle bros slapping low fives, a Facebook Crisis Page appeared. “Mark yourself safe,” it suggested. Thus, the poet took action. He marked himself safe during the Accidental Jell-O Shots & Cascade Platinum Mix-Up.

Just a few minutes earlier, the cute hostess girl had passed-by, bearing a silver tray of the squishy delights — and, apparently, detergent — so he’d taken one. He’d swallowed something. Hmph. Pretty soon, the likes began piling up. Thirty-three … forty-one … forty-five. Comments, too. “Wait, what?” and “Jell-OMG” and “Pot-scrubbahs!” they read.

Too many nauseous hipsters had queued for the ground-level wash closet, so the poet traipsed upstairs, where he tried a burnished brass doorknob. The light from the hallway slashed into a humid bedroom where two slinky figures scrambled to cover their bodies with bedclothes. One of them, probably the cute hostess, lunged toward the door. Behind her, the “minnie haha” menace of what? Some kind of townie gangster? With bad teeth?

The poet apologized his way into the actual bathroom, at the end of the hall. There, he refreshed Facebook, but the likes had plateaued at fifty-six. He’d gotten many more reactions when he posted pictures of the impressive human poop someone had left behind in his cat’s litterbox. Hmph. He splashed water on his face, and in doing so, scotched his rumpled, holey sweater.

An acquaintance of his (the one w/ dreadful book on University Press — she) had swallowed a Cascade Platinum. She had not marked herself safe. “Oh, I am HORRID,” she posted. “I feel like a MAYTAG.” And the wows, cares, and hearts had exceeded one hundred ninety … A minute later, the poet trudged home, beneath the shivery chandelier of the gibbous, gibbous moon.

Should I mark myself safe, he wondered, from the local criminal element? From my own corporeal pinchings? Chilly winds chapped his ears, as if the Crisis Page immunization had already worn off. Let meter triumph, he declared, over metrics! He shook his fist merrily, yes, merrily, at nobody in particular. That would leave only God — or Facebook — as the recipient. Yet neither heard his prayers. God’s aloofness and Facebook’s aloofness had become the one, the only temperature.