Jenny Mechanical is too mecha for the main house
but too human for the tool shed.
She can turn stripped screws, whip up a perfect grilled cheese,
provide power during an outage and mow and mulch while she's at it.
She also dreams of a recharging kiss and poems appear at her fingertips.
Jenny had a little lamb whose fleece was made of synthetic polymer
and everywhere that Jenny went, the lamb was sure to follow.
See Jenny Mechanical, stopped in the middle of the front yard,
telling her lamb to look at the new leaves with its LED eyes.
She has always been a perfectly average 5 foot 3, can open any jar, pick any lock,
but she is crying into its faux wool because of something beyond utility.
She is needed but not loved, maintained but casually disposable,
and the poems at her fingertips have diverged from factory settings,
glowing pink
then rose
then lavender
then blue
then indigo
like space that has no atmosphere yet sustains those billion burning stars.
_________
This is a unique interpretation of the image - Jenny seems to be caught somewhere in between two worlds. Everyone needs a place to belong, to feel loved...
ReplyDeleteI have known many Jenny's and in some ways there could be one in every woman that has ever lives. I love how you tell the stories of life in ways no other poet could have thought of! Brilliant as alway my friend!
ReplyDeleteHeartbreaking. I tend to avoid a/i stories for this very reason.
ReplyDeleteI see Jenny running between the main house, the tool shed and the pasture. She feels incredibly real -- almost too real. But we, so many of us, are Jenny. Factory set, indeed.
ReplyDeleteGah. That closing line just slayed me. Your imagination and talent never fail to blow me away.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I'm trying again. Hopefully this time it sticks. I wrote earlier when all was lost in the sucking of the intertubes that this poem gave me a feeling of such forlorn abandonment, of so much potential wasted, of the depth of the human heart and what it is able to do, yet is not allowed to. I have often felt that despair which one thinks a mechanized being could never know. But we do, because our parts were originally real, and still, like an amputated limb, have the feelings they always did, however much metal has replaced them. As always, you speak from your own mountain peak, and I'm just lucky to be able to stand in the foothills listening.
ReplyDelete"too human for the tool shed." - awesome, LOL!
ReplyDeleteWow, Shay... that was an unexpected twist at the end! I was not expecting it to end on a sad note - you really pulled me in!
ReplyDeleteMuch love,
David [ben Alexander]
http://skepticskaddish.com/
i feel like i've spent ten lifetimes in that in-between place, belonging to neither, fighting for one square inch to stand on, am i'm tired, so tired. i get this poem, very well written
ReplyDeleteUnique and fabulous response, Shay. Poor Jenny - looking for a real connection.
ReplyDeleteSome days I know how Jenny feels! I love this poem, it encapsulates such a unique kind of disconnectedness. It makes me think of the replicants in Blade Runner that believed they were genuinely human because they had feelings and could evolve like humans. Such a great response to the image :-)
ReplyDeleteThis is so clever and imaginative, Shay!
ReplyDelete