Winner of the $2 Westmount Poetry Prize

The Bandwidth Receptor
by Jack J. Locke
For Isaac Asimov, and based upon a prize-winning poem by Mia Anderson

The bandwidth receptor is a wire not always
functional in some people

Some can connect their bandwidth receptor with
elbow grease–easily.

For others, it limps lazily like an angel
wing strung with string and strangeness

forever to issue forth or fifth.
Whilst others make do with Rogers,

for a fee, for a small fortune
yielding joy, and abhorant hope.

And us–the lazies,
Daisies of God–grow weary

Or teary and torpid
With this great thick-as-a-thumb

Industrial-grade precision produced filament
joined to our nakednecks

like Shelley’s doctor’s creature’s antenna
picking up signals from cyberia.

But others, aided and abetted by Elmer’s
are joined at the rib-joint gathering gibberish

or are gusseted by Geisel
And giggle with frequency

Because they have discovered how a cat
in a hat cleverly claws

as the moon and the stars all but sing
songs transformative, imitative.

And believing in the imitative
We become increasingly receptive.

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