“It's Electric” by Cheryl Spinner

She thought she'd write a poem.

“It's Electric,” she said.

“Yes, that would be the title.”

I transmitted my desire through electric waves,

meant to quicken

to pulsate,

“Or maybe to pulse?”

to strike a cord within you.

“Too cliché?”

But the waves went nowhere,

hovering in the hinter regions.

“Hmm, too sexual?”

Waiting.

Waiting for someone to scoop them up,

absorb their charge,

and channel them back.

But it couldn't be done.

The charges, they float.

They cry

They flail.

They hope

And yet they remain,

in everything,

invisible,

intermediary,

hoping to be picked up,

to be recognized,

only to be channeled back once more.

Cheryl Spinner currently lives in Durham, N.C., where she is a doctoral student in the English Department at Duke University. She received her Master's Degree in English at Georgetown University in the spring of 2010. A native of Queens, N.Y., her writing intertwines yiddishe kopf with a certain kind of New Yawk flair. You can follow her research blog at electricladieszap.wordpress.com.