Who on the Web doesn’t want my information?
First and last name. Address. Phone number. Email.
Used to be you could call and not even say who
you were. Used to be where you lived was your
business. Now it’s a privilege to visit a site, as they want
to know all about me. I’ll never meet them. But it seems
our virtual lives are worth something. Sales? Aren’t you
a potential market? Oh market me! I don’t care. I’ll be
a line of type for you anyway. I’ll be letters and numbers
and buying habits. Maybe if you give me cookies, I’ll be
“searching preferences” too. I’ll be a conglomerate of
facts reducible to code. I’ll be an advertiser’s target
for revenue. Or a site’s addition to its “hits.” Believe
me, I was a person not too long ago, flesh and bones, body
and intellect, an emotional reservoir for empathy, a family
member, a state’s resident, a country’s citizen, my own
inclinations far from deducible to a stranger. When I
rode my horse at a gallop, a man jotted down a note
on a judge’s pad before giving me a ribbon. He told
me later he had seen it all just by looking in the open air
as I covered ground on my thoroughbred, as if settled
into the landscape that also kept rolling out.
–
Donna J. Gelagotis Lee is the author of two award-winning collections, Intersection on Neptune (The Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2019), winner of the Prize Americana for Poetry 2018, and On the Altar of Greece (Gival Press, 2006), winner of the 2005 Gival Press Poetry Award and recipient of a 2007 Eric Hoffer Book Award: Notable for Art Category. Her poetry has appeared in publications internationally, including The Bitter Oleander, Feminist Studies, Jacket, The Massachusetts Review, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her website is www.donnajgelagotislee.com.
© 2021, Donna J. Gelagotis Lee
Halfway Down the Stairs 