What do I mean by “intelligent life”? Wrong answers only. Educated guesses re: the word sessility. Eliot’s “hollow men” scrolling through their group chat. Trees liquidating lumber. Doing numbers at a spelling bee. Simping for Whole Foods. Whimpering lint. A line of wriggling spleens on a dingdong debate stage. Like when that fly landed on Mike Pence’s stupid helmet head. Anti-maskers with long COVID. Finding a habitable Planet Fitness. Pedestrian fretting. Psychobabble. Paying attention. Spraying cats with a spritz bottle. Splitting hairs. Watching basketball “in the bubble.” Playing basketball “in the zone.” Sisyphus sitting in city traffic – twenty years after 9/11 – texting poems into his cellphone. Always having a fresh supply of hotel notepads. Being able to differentiate Fridays from Fridays. Sludging through the language. Branding the pandemic. Seeing inside a stranger’s ear. Saying, hey, all you can do is use agave. Penning a few haiku. Fudge by Andrew Weatherhead (Publishing Genius, 2023).
