So I’m watching Judith Butler on YouTube,
talking about gender and performance,
and an ad for power tools come up
somewhere across the middle of her,
and I think why does Google analytics
(or whoever) think I am interested
in power tools, notably chainsaws?
I have never wielded a chainsaw,
never even mowed the lawn (swoon),
although I have arranged many a gnome,
stuck flamingos in the grassy sward
like candles into green-iced cakes,

but,

perhaps because I often Google cars,
and muscle cars at that, the harvestbots
assume that I am male, and therefore,
must have an abiding interest in the tools
they hung like a noisy garland around Judith Butler?
By this stage I have totally missed
whatever it was she has been talking about.
So I will watch her clip again, responsibly.
Next time will there be chainsaws?
Or perhaps three inch stiletto heels,
sharp as the spikes on which lawn-birds
spend their pink-flocked flightless days.

PS Cottier

 

PS Cottier is a poet who lives in Canberra, who knows nothing of the internal combustion engine, but loves her car. Also her canaries.

© 2019