Welcome, he said, the King of Bankruptcy
aboard. Among his other top picks
were the Earl of Envy and the Queen
of Study Abroad. Afterwards,
some of us were having second thoughts
about digital interface, our personal data
having been hacked; others began wondering
how much anyone could truly know
about our substance or essence
through social security numbers,
credit scores, dates of birth. Further
tragedies loomed. You were lost
when the scaffolding collapsed, although,
ironically, covered in asbestos and plaster dust,
I was found. After we were evacuated
from the fire, another patrol of rescue workers
in red suits, plastic helmets and goggles
arrived to lead us from the flood.
Our connection was intermittent; however,
beyond the hurricane, skies were the color
of robin’s eggs, or so we were told.
David Starkey served as Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate and is Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College, and the Co-editor and Publisher of Gunpowder Press. He has published seven full-length collections of poetry, including two with Biblioasis—Circus Maximus (2013) and A Few Things You Should Know about the Weasel (2010), as well as Like a Soprano (Serving House, 2014), an episode-by-episode re-visioning of The Sopranos TV series, and Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017). In addition, over the past thirty years he has published more than 500 poems in literary journals such as American Scholar, Antioch Review, Barrow Street, Georgia Review, Massachusetts Review, Poetry East, and Southern Review.