The Alarm

SHERWIN 31 JUDITH JOHNSON SHERWIN THE ALARM for the Secretary of State the hands lie low, slow but busy, they circle around, they juggle with numbers, they add scores up, all day we are the scores they add. without us to back them those figures have nothing to tell, the face stays blank. poor face, by day a dull pasty patience, by night a moonstruck gleam by the side of the bed just back of the world's left ear, only noticed to measure a universe beside itself, it blinks, whirrs. it would give anything, millions of minute advantages, for the good old days its masters ticked off, barter both hands and its glow-in-the-dark pale waiting if it could get the reins in its hands once more subject to nothing, with every face a wheel to drive down our days, life's charioteer as it used to be instead of this endless circling for nothing at a distance. it would throw out gardens of digital eyes if it could just once get those two hands (and the arms' weight behind them) on a scythe it could chop us down with, how it twitches to lay us low, even its chimes 32 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW cry: hurry! it is not as smart as it thinks it is. its head has nothing but springs inside though springs have their points, its hands whirr, click. its face dilates, swells, spirals in and out like a nebula, the mind behind the face is buzzing gases: no sword converts to ploughshares, but tightcoiled spring straightens to spears and curved space flattens to charts. even now it throws out a hundred feeling wheels for each numbered stop of your heart, ticktock, it is armed for war, it will get us all, it jumps up to ride your back, it will carry away your office safe, it's running like mad up the heavens not down, it will go berserk / off / bong programmed to stop your heart in its weights to make all systems go count down how even the choicest mind's vehicle shooting its springs out can run amok behave like bomb not clock if the heart be not set right. ...