Technology & Whole Lotta Love

Technology

Wanted to help my mother install a new GPS

mapping system on her SUV’s computer.

She had the equipment boxed &

waiting in a drawer like a present no one found a use for yet.  

I opened the package, looked over its contents — two flash 

drives packed in foam —

then sat back in my chair with directions

she printed weeks ago. You can figure this out, I thought, 

as I used to when reading books of philosophy by 

obscure existentialists like Berdyaev or Zubiri, or trying 

to cover up a petit larceny;

the pages stumped me, beginning with Troubleshooting,  

less a how-to & more a how-did-you-screw-this-up? 

The paperwork ran backward in time,

which I’ve learned from books & movies

never works out unless you intend to create yourself  

by marrying your great-grandparent.

I time-traveled for another twenty minutes

before I figured out my mom stapled the pages back to front.  

I laughed & started over from the end,

happy this IQ test was pass or fail.

Whole Lotta Love

Fumbling around in the dog-scented bed, 

above the dog-slobbered blankets, rabbit 

hairs off the carpet

scratching our feet through fuzzy 

socks, we have these moments of 

immunity to pet-borne distress,

my skin smelling of cigarettes &

flowery cologne, yours of rain & weeds. We

pierce the pause with our clumsy paws, 

swallowing each other like candy 

pumpkins.

Is this bliss, how desire

allows us to forget our surroundings, 

Led Zep blaring from Alexa

until the annoying intro for “Stairway 

to Heaven” comes on & both of us 

stop to say, Skip, Alexa, skip! Then,

we’re back in the game a bit longer: 

rocking, writhing, happy. If we finish 

during “The Immigrant Song,” we’ve 

won.

Ace Boggess is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.