Shoot Me, I’m Online Dating

Lenore Weiss

Skate boarding through the chatrooms
of lonely algorithms,
I meet a contractor
who wants to know
my idea of a life-partner

I text him
caring, intelligent, sexy, etc.
and he says wow
that’s just what he’s looking for
and do I think
he fits that description?

I text him
………………………….how the fuck should I know
(I didn’t actually say fuck,one of my rules,
never to curse on a first date,
which this clearly isn’t)

I don’t even know who you are, I text him.
The contractor says………….ask away
what do I need to know—

………….Maybe what your eyes look like, hear your laugh, what it
………….feels like to hold your hand

and he disappears.

But he’s
not totally
unlike the gold and diamond salesman
who sends me affirmations
from the back of Dixie Cups about
keeping my sunny side………….sunny side up
doesn’t want to actually see me
he just wants to know what I’m doing.

Should’ve texted him
………………messaging you is such a freaking turn-on

or the guy in camouflage who’s thirty years younger than me
who says he likes older women and I say,

………………doesn’t work for me,
and he says, never mind, I’m too fat for him anyway.

Really, on what planet have these men registered their profiles?
Like the man who wanted to show his dying mother
my picture when we hadn’t even met.
Isn’t that called a fraud?
______________________________________

Lenore Weiss completed a Masters Degree in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has been published in many journals including San Francisco Peace and Hope, Cactus Heart, Ghost Town, Poetica, Carbon Culture, BlinkInk, The Portland Review, La Más Tequila Review, Digital Americana, The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Nimrod International Journal, Copper Nickel, and Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal. She serves as the copy editor for The Blue Lyra Review. Books include: Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012) and Two Places (Kelsay Books, 2014). You can find more of her work at www.lenoreweiss.com.