~
a sci-fi story about flying urn hauntings that would make an excellent Hollywood blockbuster
I think you should write the poem at about three
or for am when you’re overly tired and the thin
fabric that masks your insanity in the daytime
has been torn aside
the dog should be curled up to next to you
like a small smelly shadow on the indigo sofa
you rent from a woman called
something like Charlotte
who is into maths related dirty talk
and likes to say things like in order for a
function to have a left inverse it must
be injective to her lover on the phone
also I think the poem should be about
that idea you know the one
the sci-fi story about the haunting urns
where after your death you get to fly
around in a little amphora steered by your own
uploaded consciousness to spook
and annoy your surviving family members
and how that says something about what kind
of a fun future we could have looked forward to
if humanity hadn’t opted to not have a future at all
I think tomorrow you could force Charlotte to listen
to you recite the poem in your special poetry voice
as revenge for all the overheard dirty math you have to
suffer through and then someone should buy the film
rights to the idea so that for once in your life you and the dog
would have enough money to get a place with a sofa you could
rent out to a skint neurotic poet-insomniac of your own
~
Laura Theis
Laura Theis writes poems, stories and songs in her second language. Her poetry debut ‘how to extricate yourself’ (Dempsey&Windle) won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize, was an Oxford Poetry Library Book of the Month, and an Elgin Award nominee. Her work has been widely anthologised, appears in journals such as Poetry (forthcoming), Rattle, Strange Horizons, and Mslexia, and received accolades such as the Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, the Hammond House Award, the AM Heath Prize, the Mogford Short Story Prize, and a Forward Prize nomination. She was also a finalist for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, the Alpine Fellowship, and the National Poetry Competition. http://lauratheis.weebly.com/