Old Things in New Eyes

Seema & Seema 2.0 (her words, not mine)

One of my favorite, favorite, favorite things is showing kids really campy cheesed out things. Some teenagers were hanging out at my place the other weekend, and I showed them several videos that astonished and perplexed them, including the one below. One of my all-time 100% favorites, it elicited a great deal of excited commentary including:
-“Wait. Are you sure this isn’t ironic?”

-“Is the woman in this dead?”

-“What is the significance of the flames?” (asked repeatedly)

-“This looks like an outfit someone could buy at Forever 21.”

Oh you guys. I have a Michael Bolton prompt for you this week! And it’s serious.

“I said I loved you but I…”

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

If you reject the Michael Bolton prompt (as I suspect some of you asshats will), I have another poem for you, from Verse Daily. It’s a badass poem I like a whole hell of a lot.

Multitudes

by Allison Joseph

I’m a big city girl and a small town woman,
able to speak patois in a drawl, attracting
both hustlers and hicks with the blank

open beauty of my face, a cynic turned sucker
turned goddess, voluptuous with envy, regret.
Don’t tell me you don’t sec me in my

hand-me-down dresses and brand-new shoes,
don’t claim you can’t hear me because this
isn’t where someone dark as me should be.

Better believe I know how to infiltrate,
how to translate the gasps of language,
keen for the first notes of sirens, wails

others mistake for music. Here to explain
you to you, I upend all cherished contradictions
about brown hips and curves, thighs and edges,

inches lost, gained, flesh I joyously retain
while you lavish your tongue on skin
that’s not mine, spurning what’s both

foreign and home. I am so you that I’m
not you, so when you bump into me
on this crumbling sidewalk, you’d better

say my name right, each syllable a sacrament,
blessings only our multitudes can contain.

This is a game in development, tentatively called “Chair Hockey.” It is a very good game. The details have not been worked out, but the maneuver pictured here is technically illegal. I invented it and have played it 3 times against 3 different opponents. I have never officially won a game. That is the definition of honor.