Gregory Pardlo
Even Virgin Mary couldn’t compete with the miracles
performed on dashboards by GPS devices that summon
the heavens for guidance instead of forgiveness. Instead
of blessing we want clairvoyance and the dust bursts of angels
and demons appearing on our shoulders, though we know
they may only goad us into leading either a high or low-speed
chase while America tunes in at home via eyes in the skies.
Used to be the battle of getting there was indeed a tortoise and
hare proposition full of k-turns in stranger’s driveways, but our
omniscient technology has made speed obsolete. Who needs to
hurry when we have a hivemind of newsfeeds, can discern death’s
thumbprint in the marrow of a bone and engineer children who
are elegant and fleet? In the end, James Dean couldn’t outrun
a glacier. Just as the slowest floes preyed timelessly on dinosaurs
and shat their bones, our rockets now speed into the starry
firmament to take orbit on the shoulders of eternity where they
may fill the creator’s ears with our own doubts and provocations.