What Rough Beast | Poem for August 30, 2018

Jackleen Holton
I TAKE THE FACEBOOK QUIZ: WHICH DEADLY SIN ARE YOU?

which is another waste of perfectly good daylight,
much like the last quiz I took: Which Brady Bunch Character
Are You? When I knew damn well I was Jan,
though the dumb, Jan-like hope that I might, after all, emerge
as Marcia kept me clicking through the inane questions

as brain cells trickled slowly through an invisible hourglass,
just as they do now, as I find myself driven by a secret desire
to be lust, or perhaps wrath. But by question three—
Would I rather watch honey slowly dripping from a waxy comb
or witness two chinchillas fucking?—I know where this is heading.

And the fact I’m even taking this test as opposed to stuffing
hot pockets in my face, listening to Slayer, or fucking,
probably means that, yes, I am sloth. But because I damn well know
that I am sloth, I continue hovering my mouse over the multiple choice
answers while the bills pile up, and those annoying emails

with their little red missiles keep popping onto my screen,
while our democracy trickles away by the minute, and I know I should
be protesting or calling my legislators, or at the very least posting
something in outrage instead of slogging through
these mildly enjoyable inquiries. But yes, I do love

black and white movies that take a fortnight to arrive at a plot twist.
And it goes without saying that the video of a snowy owl
floating on cloud-like ice floes is all I need imagine of heaven,
and I might just watch that again, though the kitchen faucet’s
still dripping as the quiz comes to an end, revealing that, yes, I am sloth.

So I Google sloth, because that’s where this leisurely train is heading,
and I find the soft, brown animal of my deadly sin staring me in the face, a slow
smile playing at the corners of its mouth, the tiniest glimmer of light emanating
from molasses-colored eyes while the hourglass of this trickling-away world
makes only a faintly audible sound like a dripping tap in the background.



Jackleen Holton‘s poems have been published in journals including North American Review, Poet Lore, and RHINO Poetry, online venues such as Rattle’s Poets Respond, Poets Reading the News, and Mobius: A Journal of Social Change, and the anthology Not My President.

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