[ROBERT LOWELL HAD TO JACK OFF SIX TIMES A DAY JUST TO FEEL NORMAL.]

Robert Lowell had to jack off six times a day just to feel normal. The AC clicks on like an intruder. Bananas objectify the past. Each morning I invent an oblique idealism and then occupy myself with the construction of the temple. I’m not afraid to catch a glimpse of a rich man’s penis or to watch a fully insured retail chain location burn to the ground. Cisterns are concerning. Hair keeps going. Caterpillar can still get it. Almost forty percent of America’s bridges are near collapse, but road trips remain a relatively popular form of family bonding. Each morning I walk five miles to the neighboring hamlet to unfurl the scroll and then cover my ears in anticipation. The smokestacks impress themselves upon us like grandmas. A brick-and-mortar bookstore will not redeem your soul.

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from I’M SORRY BUT NONE OF THIS IS MY FAULT–published by Essay Press

Buy the chapbook here

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Michael Martin Shea is the author of The Immanent Fields (New Mundo Press, 2026), as well as multiple chapbooks of poetry, including I’m Sorry But None of This is My Fault (Essay Press, 2025). He is also the translator of Liliana Ponce’s Theory of the Voice and Dream (World Poetry Books, 2025), which was long-listed for the 2026 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. His poems and translations have appeared in Chicago Review, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Guernica, New England Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. He holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently an assistant professor of English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.