Written by Sharon Mesmer
The Checklist is a form that was shared with me by poet and artist Fork Burke. She discovered it through Robert Wallace, who wrote, "In the end, the Checklist is perhaps nothing more than a vain and futile attempt to capture in writing the tiny details of one's life as they speed by too quickly and in too great a volume to ever grasp." A Checklist contains 33 items, the last of which is always “degrees.”
1. How many times this week has my morning commute, or just plain driving to the grocery store, turned into a road-rage-inducing nightmare?
2. Did a failed reporter bond to an alien entity and become one of the many symbiotes who will destroy Earth?
3. Will I ever get over “abbatoir is a grammar”?
4. Is the too-late start even a start? Even if I love unpeeled light?
5. Are all of us who haven’t slept well in years the same people that get eaten by wolves in pornos?
6. ¿Hay leche: Como puedo iniciar sesion?
7. So You Want To Make Block Patterns?
8. Brute force attack protection for the Jersey Community Meetup Flash Talk?
9. Is the smell of Sbarro slice grease and Kool-Aid coming from my hair? or the sky full-lit and full-tilt?
10. heart worms can crawl out of a dog’s nose?
11. Do you know why this street is called My Lapidary Fears Have Become Unguents?
12. Why should I unfriend her when I enjoy reporting her racist QAnon crap?
13. dmv written test practice or elvish translator?
14. If poets wrote laws and lawyers wrote an onomatopoeia of eyebrows?
15. Are aging and living mostly thermodynamic?
16. ¿Dónde? ¿Cuándo? ¿Quién? ¿Cómo? Ecstasy is some sugar daddy, si?
17. Contiguous areas of what?
18. the lizard starkly still against the boiling leaves but the devil just putzing around?
19. Artist, Anger, Abortion, America, and . . . ?
20. any old blue roving?
21. Are you finding strength in the softer vowels?
22. Is that Elton John? (No, it’s John Candy)
23. Monster buck can’t mate?
24. the vulnerability of order under afflicted stars?
25. You know what I’d really love right now? (Crackers?)
26. Ja Rule, just because?
27. So what are people? What is a fork? An ancient spoon? Are heebie geebies Jewish? What was the first hullabaloo?
28. the Doldrums or the Dardanelles?
29. Sam Sundown: to rise or to shine?
30. not the same robot?
31. there are secret notes in mezuzahs?
32. What if Peter hadn’t caught the wolf?
33. degrees