Kent Shaw

What is a quadrilateral? And what does that mean on the internet?

As I walked out one evening, 
the trees in my neighborhood were pulling me back. 
There was a wind in the trees. And people living in trees. 
My last paycheck I sprinkled money on the lawn to lure them down. 
At least don’t watch our daughter play in the yard. 
At least wear a mask. So you look like birds.

When birds call, is it out of protest? 
Or camaraderie? 
Does being a bird mean doing a bird thing, like calling out? 
And it only slightly matters if other birds hear it?

My friend who loves birds tells me to concentrate on what the birds are doing. 
What makes the bird be a bird. 
Is it aware of its birdness.

I told my friend about the people in my neighborhood 
wearing masks, and she asked if they were in the trees 
or picking up food from the ground. 
Were they taking cover in the brush.
But all I could describe was the expression on their face 
when they pulled their mask down.

	*

Last spring I joined TikTok. I joined Instagram two or three times. 
I made Facebook profiles for me and for my cat. 
Though she’s been dead for three years. 
In 1998 my co-workers posted a picture of me at hotornot.com. 
It looked like a mug shot. 
Because I looked like I was looking at something other than the camera. 
But that part didn’t matter. 
It was 1998. I was at least trying to be on the internet. 
And eventually something about the internet got bigger than trying. 
My first cat died and I tried to say something equal to the occasion on Facebook. 
And then my other cat died, and I didn’t even try.

	*

I remember when memory was an activity. 
Like flying amongst a flock of birds. 
Or running in place on the treadmill. 
Or driving to work each weekday. 

When I was in West Virginia, it was the same highway 
with the same people waving to me from the parking lot, 
offering to pump my gas, 
accepting payment in various forms of birds. 
Like if birds were a currency that would land on your open hand 
each time you had to spend money, 
and you couldn’t plan on birds doing anything. 
But they would if you used the right tone of voice.

It was an economy like how the quadrilateral is a vague geometrical shape. 
How do you settle on a quadrilateral between you? 
If four people are four sides to a conversation, 
what if one of them is looking away? 
What is human civilization if people keep looking away? 

Birds are so random until they’re not. 
They’re so hard to find in the tree until they’re not. 
The feeling of hiking along the edge of the ocean with birds calling all around you. 
And then you were that saint who could summon the birds, 
and some of the birds would inquire, “What exactly do you need?” 

That man, so precious in his human interest. 
The birds, so precious.  
I tried to read the saint’s writings one summer, and I gave up. 
I’m not a bird. 
And even if I had lived a part of my life depending on birds, 
I couldn’t find them all that interesting. 
Or all that mysterious in the eyes of this saint.

I joined a wall to other walls. And I called it the pronoun, “we.”

To live on a mountain means to make walls feel almost irrelevant. 
To live inside the Lincoln Memorial means to be the most walled-off version of yourself 
while still welcoming people to The House of the People.

Suffice it to say, I don’t understand walls. 
All of my coworkers dressed up like bunnies one day in June, 
and they followed me to lunch. 
Then they followed me into Whole Foods. 
And it wasn’t clear if the joke was on me. Or it was a team-building exercise.

Which is to say there are never enough answers in this world. 
And yet we keep giving the world more answers, 
and it’s what protects us from getting walled-in. 

The Super Bowl commercial where a woman 
stands at the burger counter wondering, “Where’s the beef?” 
The Super Bowl commercial with guys calling each other on land lines to ask, “What’s
     up?” 
The Super Bowl Commercial with a sock puppet talking to a sock puppet, 
“Is there a Lincoln Memorial around here?”

It took three tries before my message got over the wall. 
I’d copied the lyrics to Sting’s “If I Built This Fortress.” 
And I included a wall to hold the heart in. 
Or a wall to keep ass holes out. 
Or a wall to prove to the woman Sting really is an ass hole 
who owns up to being an ass hole 
so you think he’s not really an ass hole anymore. 
But he is. And no soothing melody or self aware lyrics are going to change that. 
My God. Why do people like ass holes so much?

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