Autocomplete¹
by Adam Scheffler
Why does it hurt when I pee, my stomach hurt, my eye twitch, my throat hurt
Why do I feel dizzy, bloated, empty, nauseous, weak, shaky, depressed
I’m so frustrated with myself, with my husband, with my acne, with my life
When will I finally die, get pregnant, find love, get a boyfriend, be happy, go into labor, get over
him
Why are flamingos pink, sloths slow, firetrucks red, flags at half staff, my feet swollen, my eyes
red
Why do we yawn, dream, have seasons, hiccup, sneeze, celebrate easter, cry, have eyebrows,
sleep
What does it mean to be human, to be queer, when you dream about snakes, to short a stock
to be anemic, to be a lottery pick
Why am I attracted to older men, older women, feet, redheads, emotionally unavailable men,
losers, my cousin, alcoholics
Why does death come in threes, happen, scare me, hurt so much, row exist, make us sad,
hurt
Why does everything taste salty, hurt, give me gas, taste bad, make me cry, taste like metal,
taste bitter
Why do I feel sad all the time, for no reason, after sex, and lonely, when I wake up, after a
nap, and empty
Why do I feel happy after crying, when it rains, at night, all of a sudden, but empty
¹I generated the italicized selections by plugging the preceding unitalicized prompts into Google’s autocomplete function, though I played around with the order of the italicized words, as well as which ones to include.
Adam Scheffler grew up in California, received his MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his Ph.D in English from Harvard. His first book of poems, A Dog’s Life, was selected by Denise Duhamel as the winner of the 2016 Jacar Press Book Contest. His poems have appeared in The Yale Review, The Common, The American Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, Rattle, Plume, Barrow Street, Antioch Review, Sewanee Review, Verse Daily, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, and many other venues. He teaches in the Harvard College Writing Program.