Donna Stonecipher

THE INFLUENCER 

            The influencer told me to begin each day with love, so I placed my head out my window and said “I love you” to the trees. Three trees, to be precise, three plane trees to the left of my view, rustling, restless, murmuring, a quadrant of quivering amid a wall of immovable concrete.  

            I was influenced by the influencer. I liked the idea of beginning each day with love. Why did I love the trees? The internet told me they were purifying the air, absorbing effluence, but I think I loved them more for their quivering, their fluid quivering. It influenced me.

            Or rather—exhaust. The trees were absorbing carbon from our cars’ exhaust, the internet told me. Effluence is fluid; factories dump effluence into rivers in other quadrants of the city, but here the trees were absorbing our cars’ exhaust. Why did they do it? Did they love it?

            I liked the influencer’s ideas and I tried to absorb them. They made me feel more pure. I told the trees I loved them and then I started the day in my immovable concrete surrounded by books, sequestered from the internet. Lately I had had the feeling that I was absorbing the internet’s exhaust. I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t love it.

             Still, later I listened to the influencer’s podcast three times in a row. I loved her ideas. They made me quiver. And I thought that if I listened to the podcast three times in a row, I might become fluent in them, I might absorb their effluence. I might stop being exhausted. I might never again forget to start the day with love.

DONNA STONECIPHER is the author of six books of poetry, most recently The Ruins of Nostalgia (Wesleyan University Press), named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR; and one book of critical prose, Prose Poetry and the City (Parlor Press, 2017). Soon to be out are her translation of fleurs, the final volume of a trilogy by Friederike Mayröcker, as well as a prose book, The Secret Life and Death of Ornament in Berlin.