"Ode to Autocorrect" by Martha Silano

Ode to Autocorrect
by Martha Silano

Because it changes O’Hare to o hate,
o hate, o hate — over and over, no matter
how many times I retype it. O hate, like

an American tune, an American fable
where, yo, you can enter an o hate
bathroom, take a selfie in the mirror

cuz your sister wants to see the pockets
of your Great American Rhinestone Jeans.
Because, on a street called Viewpoint,

I get home becomes I get guns, off a road
on a mission to kill every squirrel-ish
pedestrian. Because he was packing,

concealed, threatening to use it, use
his hands or feet. My feet, iamb
of a son of a birch, of a brick chatting

with the devil, with God, with a listener
not listening. Because he’d gone bonnets,
his garden bounty a faded wine, his wife’s

linguine a longing for a golden ear,
so I took her to the botanical gardens
in my getaway car, to a fruit on a vine,

but the limes went lemur, the night to nonfat,
the clear to catastrophic. Because driving away
from the frog man croaking hypocrite,

heavenly went down like a melting hedge,
a gal gone hog-tied, a fish crying, a tiger-
tiger togetherness, flight or fucked,

a heart, stroked, racing to its vicarious
carousel, a fungus lashed to a beam gone
beleaguered. Because he will kill her,

that’s his plan: to kill us all. Can’t commit
or commute, can’t debone his breath,
can’t take his acute paranoia, chalk it up

to cute. Because this here’s a Josie
madhouse, a bedroom bedrock-locked.
Because Blvd morphed to Bled, spirit

summoned with a Ouija board. Because
soap holder went love hen, though love
had flown the Calycanthus

like the grilled portobellos messing
with his vowels. Please please, I pleaded
to the pleading day. Because prayer

is like a bread line, a penny for your
exploded mind. Because lots of logs
to you, ma, because so sorry went poem.




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