Maureen Thorson
The World’s Most Beautiful Wisteria Tree
It is winter.
My family posts photos of fish that they’ve caught.
My family posts photos of trucks on the ice.
The internet bursts with measurements.
27 inches of fish.
3 tons of truck.
1 and ½ feet of ice.
1 ton of family.
5 megabytes of photos.
1 millisecond to click “like.”
1 millisecond times 10 times 10,000.
The internet bursts with approval.
Smiley face with teeth. Smiley face with tongue.
I heart it. I wow it.
New York’s most instagrammable subway station distracts me
for 2 minutes exact.
A purse shaped like a dinosaur.
The world’s most beautiful wisteria tree.
A meme about Persephone.
Another big fish.
A great northern pike, now. A muskie.
At my desk beside a window-wide view of chickadees and snow,
I watch the internet burst from the weight of its fish.
I like it.
I heart it.
The fish falling out of the internet
as I follow. I filter. I scroll.
Maureen Thorson is author of two collections of poetry, My Resignation (Shearsman Books 2014) and Applies to Oranges (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011). A book of lyric essays, On Dreams, is forthcoming from Bloof Books in 2020. She lives in Falmouth, Maine.