[Poem] Plastic Wrap

Plastic Wrap

Here, hap, a battlefield of shrink wrap neurons, 

mutating microplastics that line the edges of thought 

with razor wire gap

Quick to adapt

I have tried to peel them off bit by bit, 

And admire these great wonders of the 20th century

through smoke and electric zaps

To find out what’s underneath,

and let me go from this trap

Are you ready to bleed in public 

and die beyond the map, I ask, I ask

I spy, hazy but tight in the layers:

The smokestacks of Indiana,

Dollar-store Nazis,

Our sanctified Sisyphus, forever overcoming, oh snap

Joining hands with the women who mother as a hobby 

doll—the power stat! Father such an attractive app

There, the desperate family on a boat

The not so desperate on a boat, too

They prefer the self-death,

petroleum-shimmer rainbow gift wrapped inside my skullcap, as free as the clap

And then: all around, as far as the mind can imagine (not much), 

the screaming, shocking iron of the final machine, mesmerizing

—and our familiar, warm in hand now—

The sound of its forever plastic, a reassuring flap

Everyone knows who’s winning

No one knows anyone winning

A personal tragedy forwarded endless times,

sterile crap

They’ll seal you in these industrial pollutants when you’re tired of looking, no one warns us

All produced in a snap

These wraps are shiny and snug on me,

regrown like basilisk scale on a chemical peel, fearful of that other, earlier wrap: 

the stifling yap of the pulpit and terrible whip snap:

The luxury-store Nazis and popes in hats.

The clap and clap back, both an infernal trap

This is my plastic birthright, this death rite, I ask, I ask?

I have heard murmurings of what might lay beneath 

if I can rip these free and peel them back

if only for a moment before I pass:

A throne of pricking chords, loud quiet breath colliding

Under a melody that rhymes as it waves

A world beyond this fevered rap

Incomprehensible to my heartbeat stuck in this Saran sandtrap

I am allowed to ask, I ask myself, I ask

Yes, I’m going to pick at it now

Watch me bleed

out sap