By Lee Upton

Featured Art: Answer Me by Anri Sala

—after Peter Porter’s “Let Me Bore You With My Slides”

I’ll say it and I’ll say it and I’ll say it again
and here it’s said for us, illuminated. Do you like my wave effects?
The technology will be bypassed any day now. I know. So?
How did that get in? That’s my kid.
Ha ha. That’s a goat Brenda and I saw blocking the road in Brixton.
Look at the head on that.
Oh—Brenda. Sorry. There goes my job. Just kidding.
That’s not really Brenda. That’s her best friend. No, just kidding.
We were on a wildflower walk, you know? Walking by a stream and
they had these
statues that look amazingly real? I don’t know how they do it.
Carve mushrooms or something and magnify them into these enormous—
we’re moving on. Oh, here we go, our Venn diagram—
why is Brenda wearing antlers?
Okay. On track.
You know, I say something and then what I say is right up here.
I might as well just give away handouts and leave the class.
Tempting. I mean I could go home right about now.
Right when it’s least expected.
Except I’m a professional. I meant to crop that.
That shouldn’t be embedded.
Nice 3-D effects, if I do say so myself.

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Lee Upton’s most recent books are Visitations: Stories and Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles: Poems.