Modified Continuous Wave: UNANSWD/UNHRD

by Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer

Going to and from somewhere,
I pass a group of happy children
shouting, Lemonade!
from across the street.

When I do not stop,
they instead cry, Loser!
and I know they’re right.

But they’re not selling what I want, and who is?
It does not seem producible.

It is not the house on the corner,
which is the size of a dormitory
and equal in its charm.

I do not covet this, the biggest house, Reince Priebus.
I have no romance for the tiny assholes running the lemonade stand.

That is someone’s dream, American and unexceptional.

In my palm, a digital map locates me in a roundabout as a pulsing, blue dot.
I cannot get anywhere from here.

Why do I not want lemonade?
Why do I not participate?

I watch people on television, traveling.

I listen to Neil Armstrong radioing from the moon.

Over and over, I scan the transcripts of
Earhart circling Howland Island:

WE ARE UNABLE TO HEAR YOU
TO TAKE A BEARING

PSE TAKE BEARING ON US
AND ANS [US] WID VOICE

What can I make
with intermittent despair?

An engine roars, and I look up
to see the sun caught in the fuselage
of a jet. I wave.

DO YOU HEAR MY SIGNALS

WILL U PLS ACKNOWLEDGE

And then all my thoughts are icy blue
with frigate birds and parachutes
and I am filled with cumulus and cannot see.

KHAQQ CLNG ITASCA

WE MUST BE ON YOU
BUT CANNOT SEE U

Knowing I begin and end with images,
how far across this field
can my voice extend in singing, in screaming?

Published on June 9, 2017