Google, you fiend.

You float such a light-hearted question over the photo of a terminally ill cat,
gray fur against blue blanket, taken mere hours before
she would pass peacefully in my arms (our final kindness to her) amid
the assorted cruelties and wonders that pour unbidden from the silicon brute
I carry in my pocket.

It serves up sports scores and Amazon’s clickable joys, along with

buildings puffing out to dust and rubble,
someone lifting trapped ducklings from a sewer grate,
someone singing praise for the banishment of cellulite,
the Manhattan skyline enveloped in a smoky orange haze,
people fleeing war come too near to home
others trying to bind war’s unfathomable wounds.

What can I make of this blue-light deadpan,
the best of what we can be lying uncomfortably close to
the monsters that lurk beneath all of our surfaces?

LISA JAMES has been published in several publications, including the PPA Literary Review, North Sea Anthology, Whispers & Shouts, Oberon, For Loving Precious Beast and Breakwater Review. She is the author of Nature, Sometimes Human (JAL Publications) and The Ties That Bind (Words With Wings Press).