These sonnets, excerpted from a group that forms the title poem of Mary Jo Salter’s recent collection, bring us into the newly configured “rooms” of her current life, populated by students, her first grandchild, existential comedy.
Followers and Friends and Participants,
Gallery View, which Speaker View supplants,
Meeting Attendants, who for now are Mute
or worse, Unmute, a word I might dispute
even exists, whether verb or adjective:
Is this life? Is this how you want to live?
Nose-scratches broadcast, thoughts shrunk to an icon
or two (Clap, Thumbs Up), and if you leave your mic on
while others talk, your faintest sighing framed
in gold light like a vanity mirror? Named
on your little tile, you can’t slip out unseen.
Self-surveilled, your eye contact on-screen
seems off. Don’t look at people! Focus where
the tiny camera is that proves you’re there.
*
Bookcase-prop and real or fake bouquet
behind you, well-dressed only to the waist
as if in a casket, top half on display,
here’s another weirdness to be faced:
you’re in the Gallery. You’re shown as one
of your own satellites—as if the sun
were both a planet and the Copernican
magnet for all planets. Yes, I can
undo all this and activate the Hide
Self feature . . . where was that again? It’s hidden
nearly as neatly as the moon’s dark side.
But that’s like suicide. It feels forbidden
now that I’m linked to the beloved spectator
who is myself: light-source and shadowed crater.
*
Here, as professor, I am Host; Enable
the Waiting Room, and one by one Admit
my students etherized around a table
in the Platonic classroom where they sit—
or recline in bed. Protest this? I don’t dare.
Full roster: nobody’s ill! Smile and wave
hello, a new habit. Can you hear me? Share
Screen, clicking a doc I thought to Save
to Desktop on my laptop. This is normal.
Mixed metaphors, and no term we have chosen
ourselves. Whether our verse was free or formal,
we thought we were free thinkers . . . Oops, you’re frozen,
we’re bound to say. We sign on for more jargon.
Paste in the password, try to Join again.
