Ken Poyner: Puppy Love

I will never meet Molly: Her slender three-sixty rotating arms, Her arch-sway thundering legs, her Incline balance to forty-five degrees.

I will never sit across from her

Trying half the night to figure The loop modulus in her blink pattern, The keywords that elicit a wink. She might cross her cables When I think she should, or hang On the edge of re-ordering her Interrupts, but I won’t be finding out.

I will never meet Molly

Nor need to decide blonde or brunette, Or caustic raven hair; nor play all day At deciding the seductive hair’s Sensuous thickness or length.

Molly Just cannot be bought by a boy With only a paper route. I would need

A job in low-end retail, Or thumbing controls at a warehouse: An income stream to make the robot Tender’s approval routines delight.

Still, Molly waits in the window Of the second-hand store, given just Enough power to recognize glancing Potential customers, and to roll out A promising, come-buy-me wave as they pass.

I glimmer in her window four times a day, And with each appearance she writhes her greeting At me. There is no internal fire — Until after purchase, and customized set up in the home — Informing her teasing pattern recognition subroutines.

And yet I am giggly with glad.