What to do with what we have ordered.

“I said, Fix me.”

Amazon Package

.

I wanted a thing in the shape of a Yom Kippur fast, smelling

of hands clasped in anguish. I bought it online.

The package slid up and down in various directions

.

on black belts in one of Amazon’s famous fulfillment centers

outside a major city. Philadelphia. Baltimore. Columbus, Ohio.

A computer scanned and tracked its progress.

.

It was shipped to me by average humans with choppy beards,

braids in their hair, or buns. As their system weighed

the ephemeral to ensure my order was correct, I wondered

.

Did I want this? Too late. Bed frames. Beauty products. Books.

One box at a time loaded into a truck, a UPS vehicle,

town to town, driven by a man in brown shorts, his hands

.

cupping a blue-and-white cushioned package. He crammed it

into my mailbox like a dead bird. I cut the seam,

held the object to my chest, beat to beat. I said Fix me.

.

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Mari Pack’s work has appeared in Yes, Poetry, Quail Bell Magazine, and others. The Description of a New World, her first chapbook, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2019. Mari is an editor for Guideposts.