Prior to these glowing screens were
billboards, placards, sandwich boards,
curated store windows
that said many of the same things:
notice me,
be enticed by me,
think like me,
buy me.
Those flat relics hang around still
with their chipped paint,
single-message slow memes
fixed to the landscape,
ignored by heads-down hand-held eyes,
left like those rusty
training wheels in the garage
for the child’s bike
we once wrecked in the gravel,
crying with a pet wound.
Now we have so many
fast reflective wheels whirring,
well-heeled adult spokes spinning
out millions of powerful, expansive ways
to crash,
so many novel, numbed, flowing
lacerations.