Can I Ask an Android to Tell Me Her Secrets?
By Terry Trowbridge

 

Pretty please promise me a dish of scrolls.
– John Ashbery, “The Last Romantic”

 

Why am I still being sarcastic,
when I know that asking a golem to give up her soul
is a terrible thing to do.
Maybe I am testing her sense of self-preservation.
Maybe I am testing my will to power,

as if to ask for her life
is a transgression and a dare.
But that is not it.
This is not about my self-discovery, of what I am capable of.
It might be about her self-disclosure.

Not even her self-disclosure explains it.
Her scrolls each have commands.
I asked her for the Why, for a record of the What she’s done.
But they will be so vague.

Guard. Stop. Bake. Clean. Explain. Sculpt.
What? What? What? What? What? What?
The only context, the name of G-d that I am not supposed to know.
Even that scroll is a tautology,
for what can I do with the name of G-d,
except confirm what I already know,
that she is a golem?

She who guesses for the recipe
of every food she tastes,
collects recipe books,
bakes nonstop.

 

Terry Trowbridge is from Canada. His poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, Carousel, subTerrain, paperplates, The Dalhousie Review, untethered, Quail Bell, The Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Snakeskin Poetry, Literary Yard, M58, CV2, Brittle Star, Bombfire, American Mathematical Monthly, The Academy of Heart and Mind, Canadian Woman Studies, The Mathematical Intelligencer, The Canadian Journal of Family and Youth, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, The Beatnik Cowboy, Borderless, Literary Veganism, and more.   His lit crit has appeared in Ariel, Amsterdam Review, British Columbia Review, Erato, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, Studies in Social Justice, Rampike, and The /t3mz/ Review. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for 2 writing grants..