These three poems by Cam McGlynn are obsessed with irony, belief, and how our cognitive biases and abilities affect how we interact with the world, whether we like it or not…
by: Cam McGlynn
When the Buffalo Buffaloes
The hot springs steam like smoke. Smoke that tastes like rotten eggs. On my right, my daughter sings to scare off bears. Sticks snap on my left. The bison huffs and paws the ground. I didn’t know a bison was there. I’ve never seen an animal actually paw at the ground. I don’t think the bison knew we were there. We back away on the boardwalk. My hands tight on my daughter’s shoulders in front of me. Nonsense songs coo out from under my breath Who’s a nice bison? Whose ready for bed? My daughter giggles. Why is my daughter in front of me? The bison rips a bush out of the ground with his horns. The bison flings the bush across the boardwalk. I turn my daughter around. I tell her walk away as fast as you can. I tell her Don’t run, the hot springs! I tell her Don’t look back. I turn back to the bison. The bison charges. He runs around the patch of pines, the pines that had hid us from each other’s view, the pines that he is charging into, that he’s goring into splinters, that he’s snapping in half. I will spray him with my bear spray. I forgot the bear spray. I will throw my body at the bison. Can already feel his horns opening a gash in my chest. I will throw my body at my daughter. Should I protect her kidneys or her head? I will cover her body with my body. I will cover her ears with my hands. The bison is running in slow motion. The bison is running in polaroids. I have to shake to make the picture appear. The bison is running in a red viewmaster. I have to snap the plastic lever to see where he will appear. The bison stops running. Grand geyser erupts. The geyser mists us with its waters. The water is colder than I expect. Tomorrow, the park ranger will tell us that’s called a geyser blessing. Tonight, we walk back to the hotel along a different path.
Prosopagnosia
Mild
Watching TV with me is an exercise in patience
for my husband. He explains, once again,
that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are two different
men and no, they aren’t supposed to be twins. Yes,
that blonde woman is the same wife as before,
but she bought a new dress and her hair’s in a braid.
Like dogs, I’m suspicious of people in hats. What
are they trying to hide from me? I realized I like
watching reality TV, because their chyrons repeatedly
tell me that this is Aaron, 25 years old, a model
from Miami. I can rattle off my own traits—brown hair,
blue eyes, glasses—but when I look in the mirror,
it’s like seeing an old friend: a bit of a shock, first
and then…ahh yes, there she is.
Moderate
There are so many jobs I could never have:
a police sketch artist certainly, but not a teacher,
memorizing thirty new kids a year nor a bartender
either, at least not one who wants any tips. There’s no
such thing as “regulars” to me.
I spent my freshman year of high school convinced
that the tall boy in my English class and tall boy
in Geometry were the same kid. He just went by different
names, depending on the subject. Once
at a coworker’s funeral, I was sharing condolences
with a work friend. He finally stopped and asked me,
“I’m sorry. How do we know each other?” We didn’t.
People love to tell me that they never forget a face,
it’s only the names that escape them. But what’s the use
of remembering a name without a face attached to it?
Severe
I can't picture my dead grandmother's face.
I can only picture the picture we took on Easter
together. Her wispy silver hair, before chemo
stole it all. Her soft, broad arms wrapped in blue
and wrapped around us, my brother and me
and my new stuffed bunny. She wore Revlon lipstick
that left a smear of rose on my cheeks, but what shape
were her lips? She didn’t wear glasses, too vain,
but what shade of blue were her eyes? Even now,
I could recognize her honeysuckle and jasmine
perfume, but not the neck she dabbed it onto.
At night, I watch my husband’s sleeping face
and know that no matter how long I stare,
I will always struggle to pick him out of a crowd.
A Skeptic's Guide to Dancing Anyway
Interlocking Rubaiyat
You wanted to write a hopeful poem
because you wanted to read a hopeful poem.
You don’t believe in manifestation—that blame
game, alchemical not-so-secret, ho-hum
prosperity gospel by a woo-woo name—
but there’s some scattered neurons in your brain
that believes that what you put into the world,
you’ll get from the world. They used to claim
that these cognitive biases only unfurled
in the human mind, but even squirrels
can be superstitious. Pigeons too.
Our fallacies were baked into our neural
networks long before learning to stand on two
feet. If you give an animal some food
at random times—an acorn, an oily mackerel—
a breadcrumb— they will invent a crude
ceremony between each food interval,
convinced that they discovered the secret ritual.
A sea lion traces arcs through the air with its head.
A rodent bows. A pigeon twirls in a habitual
figure-eight. But belief isn’t what rewards them. Instead,
a timer releases food into their dish. They’re fed
regardless of their movements. They dance anyway.
You too try to pigeon your way through the dread
times. You want to believe that joy is a crumb that may
be brought on by dancing. But too often, you stay
silent and still, head down in deep waters.
The only bird songs you trust are the blue jays’
alarm calls. Fear is your persistent squatter:
stone by chiseled stone, it builds in you an altar
to worship all your worries. It will never be done.
When you saw the eclipse, you would’ve slaughtered
your closest neighbor to bring back the sun.
You could never be trusted with a loaded gun.
When the hot stink of buffalo breath baptized
your face, you knew him to be a god. An angry one.
You stumbled backwards and averted your eyes
like any other penitent sinner, chastised.
When thunderheads loom and rumble, even plants
bow and flip their pale leafy underbellies to the sky.
Cam McGlynn is a writer and scientific researcher living outside of Frederick, Maryland. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Whale Road Review, Rattle (online), Wildscape, The Shore, and ONE ART, among others. When not knee-deep in a swamp, you can find her at pinkpossumclub.bsky.social.
