No one in the past
gets flustered by Roman slaves
wearing Apple watches
or a wealthy merchant’s wife in Ancient Athens
sporting Gucci-Google eye-wear.
Nothing churns history
except a Mark Anthony or a Pericles,
and no internet means images set in stone
with garish pigments slowly fading to bone.
Wandering from your time-tour team
can end with you absorbed in a vast ocean
carried by a temporal wave
too far from a slender shore
to retrieve you.
You’re no Cleopatra—no Sappho.
You and your anachronistic lenses
won’t last the fall of Athens or Rome,
long after the tour’s swept back home.
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Vincent Miskell is the co-author (along with his wife Jane) of Overcoming Anxiety at Work and Motivation at Work, published by McGraw Hill. His short fiction has appeared in Rosebud, Millennium, Frontiers, Eclipse, InterText, and in the paperback anthology The Age of Wonders. His most recently published novel is The Night Stands Still, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and so on—along with other works such as “Godspeed, Inc.” (a free download). His poetry has appeared in The Lyric, Mobius, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Space & Time, Star*Line, TLJ, F&SF, and in the 2006 and 2022 Rhysling Anthology. Until the campus closed in 2021, he was an adjunct faculty member at Johnson & Wales University in North Miami, where he taught psychology, sociology, and communication courses. He has also taught creative writing and English Composition. His undergraduate degree is from Rutgers University, his master’s degree in liberal studies is from Empire State College SUNY, and he has 21 doctoral credits. He lives with his wife and rescued pets in Dania Beach, FL. |