A LITANY OF LUKEWARM SENTIMENTS
Millennials dunk biscuits in their tea
but do not talk to strangers while waiting
for a bus that does not show up for half an hour.
Sunday timetable. On Sundays, they do not wait
for Mondays. They do not fuck anyone to look
at their Instagram stories for the rest of their lives.
They are better than that. They create spreadsheets
for things-to-do with the new-guy-in-town.
On being gaslighted by a millennial,
the millennial will ask another millennial
if gaslighting is a millennial thing. The millennial
will not know. Millennials do not read about people
reading about people nor do they remember
which was that goddamned book
in which they had tucked rolling paper &
a boarding pass from Dubai to Rome.
At a party, which is in reality just
a networking event, their excuse for being rude
to their peers sets behind that hill
or is that a plateau or a mountain, like winter
sun, which refuses to shine on anything,
even if it has no alternative.
—from Rattle #70, Winter 2020
__________
Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal: “It is safe to assume that my poem was written on a summer afternoon while sitting on a very long table at one of my favourite cafés in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter where the person sitting next to me blasted David Bowie from their headphones, and I thought about the dying end of a cigarette in a city I had never visited nor had any plans to.” (web)
