What do we do with this information?

by Tina Posner

Rats high on cocaine prefer jazz to silence.

Orcas have revived a fad from the 80s,

donning dead salmon hats.

This is just the tip of information iceberg.

A fashion show with geese

renders me speechless.

I take many scrolls throughout the day

There’s a lot of shipping,

problems solved by orders of operation,

ADD symptoms wheeled out on reels

My schadenfreude is heartfelt.

There are before and after

versions of everything

I swallow a daily dose of history,

photograph sunsets i paid for in old friends.

I live for this jazz of information

Post pleasure. Post loneliness.

A parade of whales in their Easter bonnets

Ramming and sinking yachts.

Show me more cross-species friends,

And elderly fashion plates.

Reveal the meanings of songs.

I need to be told what I already know

And what I don’t.

It needs to be pithy—more pith, please.

I wonder if I should have had kids.

I wonder if I should have proposed

a threesome that time in Paris.

These are things I can’t yet look up. Yet.

I can’t look up. My attention is glued.

The silence around me is vast.

My eyes are irradiated and dry.

As if I’d finished crying.

As if.