Poetry | Excuses | Mary Ann Schaefer

Excuses listen
solar flares
caused the clock

speed to skip so
that a divide-by-zero

error lead to the floating
point processor overflow

and at first she was only
confused, but then petrified

like a rabbit freezes
when scared, but by

then the flickering
static from her

fingers prompted
memory leaking,

something about
the guitar sitting

in a corner just as
doppler effects

declared the hard
disk had head-crashed,

the WAN and the WiFi
crashed, the satellite

crashing in clouds
of ionization from

the air conditioning
needed to control

global warming on
a bank holiday when

everything stopped;
apparently she failed

to pay the bill.