Poem for My Daughter on Amazon Prime Day 2019
Dante Di Stefano
Sometimes I want to crack open
my iphone and inscribe
its tiny circuitry with an ode
to astronauts and teardrops,
instead of scrolling through
another unceasing newsfeed.
I dream of your future America
as a giant empty fulfillment center,
as an endless sign-in page
where you can’t remember
your password, as a wish list
composed by algorithm,
as screen and package and click
and click and screen and porch
and package and click and screen,
but your mother and I will continue
to read to you in the cadences
of wingbeat and crayoned fire
because the world outside
the digital ether and the downloaded app
continues to be sprung
with a wonder no silicon behemoth
can cache or buffer or mine
and still, at any moment, the melody
ribbiting our earbuds might blossom
into the most outrageous orchids
of want and want and yes and love.
Dante Di Stefano is the author of Ill Angels (Etruscan Press, 2019) and Love Is a Stone Endlessly in Flight (Brighthorse Books, 2016). His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in Best American Poetry 2018, Poem-a-Day, Prairie Schooner, The Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere.). He holds a PhD in English Literature from Binghamton University and is the poetry editor for DIALOGIST.