Very exciting news! A poem of mine called “Desensitization” was recently published in The Andromedae Review‘s premier issue! You can see it here for free. It was put into three columns, but just read one column at a time.
“Desensitization” was inspired by a time that I drove past a car on fire that was parked right up against a building. I pulled over and called the cops right away, and of course they’d already had plenty of calls about it. Once the call was over, I sat there feeling strange. I had never seen something like that before, and it struck me how scary it would be to be the owner of that car or the building next to it (the fire was starting to pop and sending fiery bits all over the place at that point) and have no idea what was going on. I could be happily shopping at the mall, meanwhile my car is on fire and starting to destroy something else around it.
This made me think of the difference between watching similar things (or much worse) in a movie and feeling no real connection to them versus seeing them in person. There is an extreme difference. The level of desensitization we have to shocking, frightening, and life-changing events is higher than we realize. I hope this poem expresses that fact.
