Calming Experience
Today all the girls are Molly, all the boys are Ted. Forget yesterday’s names. They no longer apply. Everyone write your own name tag as legibly as you are able. The act of writing more firmly fixes fact in memory. You cannot recycle old name tags. Commitment to the new must be as if all our trodden yesterdays we were all Molly and Ted. This is how you must address one another. This is how you will be addressed. This is how our authorities think of you. When you think of yourselves, you must emulate them. Remember, today is yesterday.
Ken Poyner: The latest of Ken’s twelve collections of poetry and flash fiction is “Science Is Not Enough,” speculative poetry. He lives in the lower right-hand corner of Virginia, and is married to a world champion female power lifter. He spent 33 years herding computers. See him in “Analog”, “Asimov’s”, “Café Irreal”, “Blue Unicorn” and another hundred or so places. www.kpoyner.com.
