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.
