With Thanks to My Electrician

The light switch

in the bathroom is

somewhat tilted, off-kilter

with every purple

square of tile,

the baseboard

that’s the footer

to symmetry.

I ponder this

before I flick it

off. Maybe our apartment

is the thing that’s crudely

angled, haphazard,

the fruit of inattention.

Maybe the switch 

is the one: that’s

truly perpendicular.

Maybe I am

slanted

in the clone of

looking glass, its mirrored

misalignment

of the world.

Maybe I’ve wasted

money

on my chiropractor/

quack. That Hugo’s Quasimodo

was the king of proper

posture,

that Pisa’s leaning

tower

is the only thing we’ve

made that’s not

askew,  

that we stand

upon the earth

with shoulders slouched—

like italics, despondent

in defeat,

that our use of lines &

levels

is the blind that leads

the blind, groping

in the black, mewling

we can tell

what’s straight & crooked.

Andreas Gripp

April 5, 2025

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