Who needs Pachinko
when there is a window
and a day like this:

a sky
defining and redefining blue
and clouds:
cirrus teaching birdwings how to feather
altocumulus thickening and dispersing:
a white fleece jacket
peeling off
and beneath
the ocean
wrinkling away to the horizon:
a giant puckered T-shirt
that the world has shrugged herself into

hey, she says, who’s got time for this much ironing?

Not me,
I’m too busy re-thinking Roland Barthes
and the death of the author
and what that means
now that AI is here:
if ChatGPT can write a poem
in the manner of Miriam Wei Wei Lo,
maybe I really am dead.

My seatbelt buckle
bites into my belly,
as if to tell me
it still means something
to be here.

I think of Dorothy Sayers
with her illegitimate child
and difficult marriage,
still finding it in herself
to write about art
as this holy trinity:
the idea  / in the mind of a maker
unfolding its energy  / in the flesh of form
and finding its power / in the minds of others.

Think about it:
my words
bouncing into your mind
and meaning rippling away:
so many clouds stretching out over the ocean,
so many
pachinko balls
hitting or missing
their targets.

*Contextual note: pachinko is the name of a pinball arcade game that is popular in Japan. It is also the name of a best-selling novel and a TV miniseries based on that novel.