digital art: ralph murreHIGH-SPEED CONNECTIONS
by Cathryn Cofell
I took a digital picture of my hand
and sent it away,
emailed to a psychic in West Bend.
At first, undeliverable.
Then a suspicious attachment, needs
authentication.A third time she replied,
said my palm was fuzzy.
I became her $20 Pay Pal
and suddenly she had clarity,
a map quest, a maze of intersections.
She saw a scoundrel’s name,
Lucy or Cin,
a flamboyant but unremarkable life.
Wrong, I said, that was not my life-
line she was reading,
it must have been a silver hair
caught on the lens as the shutter closed.
But she held firm,
said it was more than the palm
she read. She knew me. She saw
how my lines crossed with others,
a flash of pain in every touch.
She saw a future as a circus act
or a hit man and I knew she had me,
caught in her sites, that day
I let you fall from my slick palms,
that endless Hitchcock drop,
hands forever clutching,
cliffs of straw and chaff.
~ previously published in Oranges & Sardines
