Two Pieces

Without Notice

We wake from our own snores to find our apartments missing. We were oblivious beneath comforters and now we wander barefooted through corridors and trace our fingers over numbers frozen in brass. Our doors can't remember their addresses. Disappearances like this are rare, but every year someone in our building loses a husband or lover. The windows have abandoned us and the voile curtains and the wedding photographs. We ride elevators up and down and call out to roasting pans and rocking chairs. The alcove with the paisley wallpaper has vanished. The cherry-red kitchens betrayed us. Our bedrooms evaporated—even the salty scent of sex has drifted off. We blame the community board president. We blame real estate developers and tax accountants and priests. We regret our quarrels with thermostats. The walls have devoured the floors and the floors have devoured themselves, crunching noisily the way a caterpillar consumes its molted skin. Baby spoons and sobriety coins and college diplomas still in their frames. Gone, just gone, and how to retrieve them now? Fluorescent bulbs buzz in the stairwell. I run as quickly as I can without my shoes.                 

This is Serious

Hey, Siri, rock in my pocket, lump in my throat—Wake up—

Good morning to you, too! By the way, it's 1:22 PM.

I’m hungry and we’re lost—

OK, here's what I found: The Hungry Chicken Country Store.

Lost, and you’re all babble and ping, jangling every street like a Santa clone. Siri, we're in trouble and—

Getting directions to Big Trouble Books.

Siri, there's more to life than GPS coordinates.

LIFE, noun, the condition that—

I need to know where we're going and you scuttle off to your cloud, a prima-goddess. You and Alexa. You and Cortana. The lot of you digital ass—

I found six matches. Could you be more specific?

—istants lounging by the pool with ancient deities, telling prophesies, conjuring wars.

Psychic Studio on Central Avenue gets 100% positive ratings.
Wanna try that one?

Yesterday I adjusted your settings and you got all haughty and philosophical.

I don't see Socrates in your contacts. Who do you want to call?

I call my friends to discuss serious matters—life after death, death after life, serious, SERIous matters—

I found this on the Web. Check it out!
MAP OF THE HUMAN SOUL.

And now you’re Athena reciting Wikipedia. Now you’re Ariadne weaving solutions to Sudoku.

The puzzles are solved by logic and no map is required.

Hey, Siri, I’m far from home, wandering a labyrinth of cobbled roads.

To intercom, download the home app in the App Store.

Don’t give me your spinning wheel. Just throw me a thread—

First, you'll need to unlock your iPhone.

Sing me a hymn.

Ahem. OK. Here I go—Ahem—just let me clear my—

Jackie Craven

Jackie Craven writes poetry, prose, and hybrid works steeped in magical realism. Her collection of surrealistic prose poems, WHISH, won the 2024 Press 53 Award for Poetry. Previous titles include Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road Poetry Press) and chapbooks from Headmistress Press and Omnidawn. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, and many other journals and anthologies. She lives at JackieCraven.com and on Zoom, where she hosts an open mic for writers.