By Robert Wood Lynn

Somebody got Super Speed and somebody
got Can Talk To Fish. Somebody else
got Invincibility and Flying both
at the same time which doesn’t seem fair

especially since somebody else got
Motivated By Dead Parents.
But most people just got some combination
of Can Curl Tongue and Double-Jointed.

I didn’t get any of those.
I’m little help in an emergency
even just the kind of hot embarrassment
where people ask you for a party trick.

I did get Impervious To Poison Ivy.
I am mostly happy about it.
I keep the little card they gave me,
the one with nicely embossed letters,

in my wallet and I peek at it
more often than is polite to.
It has come in handy enough times.
Here’s your ball, dear strangers.

It rolled under the fence, worried a path
through the rest of us all the way
into the angriest vines. But here you go.
You’re welcome, citizens, I say as I don’t fly away

Robert Lynn is a poet from Virginia. An MFA candidate at New York University, he holds a law degree from the University of Virginia. His debut chapbook How to Maintain Eye Contact is forthcoming from Button in December 2021. His work has been featured in Antioch Review, Blackbird, Michigan Quarterly Review, Shenandoah and other publications.