COMEDY Poem: Moms on Facebook, again., by Torrey Francis Malek

And she’s just hung up a brand-new banner.
It’s a tactless candid of all her children
flustered, glimmering beneath sheets of summer sweat,
sodden in soggy starched suits and wet silken dresses.

The scene: A moment frozen of us waving her down,
wide-eyed and irritant, as if she were moments from
landing an old biplane without her wheels folded out.

You first note our burnt eyes barking from the salt baths.
Our growling scowls, growing out of motionless mouths.
Our smiles are doors opened by sesame seed keys.
Yes, this scene is the perfect portrait of her progeny.

We begin by taking turns begging her, ‘take it down,’
each in our own special method of bartering.
But she averts us with her practiced alibi:
that, ‘this is the best pic she has of us all,’
and by that she means: It’s the newest around.

When one of us hopelessly reports her post, (Harassment),
she retaliates with an album: Each image, us in awkward, unscripted poses,
wide-lensed angles of pimpled moonfields, pocked noses,
mouths brimmed of foodmash, eyes shuttered like letterboxes,
gardens grown graciously between our coffee-stained bicuspids,
avenging hairs emerging wild, like John McClaine out of air-ducts.

And when the digital dust settles, we wave our white flag emoji’s.
The posts stay hung in an album called, ‘my lOvely Children5 – Part 4’
where they will stay, decaying data bytes, until a new Y2K claims them,
or unless we finally get that Facebook password figured out.
So far, it’s none of our names.