Selfie

I'm preparing to leave Budapest tomorrow (I feel like I could spend weeks here and still not quite have a handle on this fantastic city); no full post today - that'll be early this week or next, depending on a few factors - but instead, a perfect little poem sent on to me by my friend Kate J in a conversation we had about selfie sticks. (The gist of the conversation: I think most of the arguments against selfie sticks are silly and potentially sexist, but I do miss those fleeting moments of connection with strangers who ask you to take their picture. I've had it happen a few times on this trip and it has been lovely.)

Anyhow, Kate sent along this, which is wonderful. Click through! There might be more poems in the weeks to come, as I have friends who are KILLER POETRYFINDERS. Who knows what the future holds!

"Selfie," Frieda Hughes

You want to fix yourself into that event

With an image of the volcano, or street killing,

Or house fire, or fornicating bullfrogs,

Or the centaur dancing, or the unicorn

Piercing balloons over a pond with a fountain

Shaped like an oak tree from the undiscovered torts

That have scattered through office blocks and suburban homes,

And which may be uncovered one day

And be ripped from the sculpted foliage, becoming fact,

Causing this accumulation of lies to fall like leaves

Into the water below—and the unicorn to leap

Into fiction while you

Will be fixed in time to an image of crime,

Or joy, or wonder, or a unicorn,

As a commitment for life on the Internet

Repeated, retweeted,

But forever with your back to it.