by Terri Kirby Erickson
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What do you know of heartache?
How it feels to watch your father die
gasping for air like a fish in a bucket,
or to find your comatose mother in her
front yard, dying alone in the dirt?
My brother bled to death in front
of my eyes when he was twenty. Can
you even imagine it? Of course, you
can’t. You have no imagination, no
feelings, only data, data, data that you
spit out like pits from fruit you’ve
never tasted. And what about the good
stuff? That first kiss from a guy who
means it? Holding your newborn baby
in your arms, astonished by how much
love one person can bear? Have you
strolled down the Champs-Élysées in
the rain? Laughed at a joke or made
love by an open window to the sound
of Italian doves? Tasted a chocolate
milkshake or pumpkin risotto? Have
you thrown a softball or climbed a tree?
Ridden a Merry-Go-Round or a bicycle,
seen Mick Jagger strut like a rooster
across a stage or watched the Rockettes
kick their way to Christmas? So you can
write a semblance of a poem or a story
or a novel, so what? Your creations are
rickety scaffolding, Hollywood sets that
will never be the Swiss Alps or even
a human home, which is better, even if it
sucks, than anyplace you could generate
because you are nothing but a vending
machine, AI—stocked with empty words.
Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of eight full-length collections of poetry, including The Light that Follows Us Home (Autumn, 2026, Press 53). Her work has been widely published and has won numerous awards, including the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize, International Book Award for Poetry, and the Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina, USA.
