Tweet (Howlage to Ginsberg)

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by character limits, cramming hysterical accounts of pedicurists,
holding their phones at awkward arm angles prowling for a few bars
fedora-clad and scrounging for wifi under fluorescent-lit bus stops and the tilted ceiling panels of crowded mall Sbarros,
who, insomniatic and stricken with carpel tunnel, typed subtly in the pew during their sister’s wedding, floated through house parties like robo zombies contemplating tagging @ some lucky guest,
who bared their brains to followers large in breadth and varied, laying their diatribes down in dashboards,
who passed through universities with the smug light of ironic detachment glowing on their forward-leaning faces,
whose dexterous fingers crackled on keys like fireworks for revolution
who got busted in Stats class for bravely publishing photos of the teacher mid-nose-pick
who ate LeanCuisines defrosted from the back corners of snowy freezers and flipped through the Facebooks of various middle school nemeses at night,
with eyes stretched and acerbic, surface encounters aired as other beings melted to pixels and pictures, the twists of their histories laid bare for hands to click in jealousy or in jest,
inside jokes passed between Monday mouths, eternal 3AM drunk dialogues frozen in archives, perhaps curled side by side resting their eyes because we never could,
to return years from now, I am told, when we try to get corporate jobs, each uncensored mouth to rot at their good graces in the minds of potential employers with forehead lines bent in unimpressed anguish, precluding any source of income and exiling us thus to the basements of our childhood homes to furiously scan eHow articles on how to make and sell jewelry,
all these warnings aside I am currently more plagued by the tendril of possibility that several middle school nemeses are happier than I am now, the last mega-popular prom picture commented on by scores of fellow beings, each tryhard-satirical tweet, a single text box of biography for this raw red wad of neurons and synapses pulsing and carrying signals,
to recreate the syntax of mediocre human prose and then to stand before you dumb and full of words, checking updates between classes, rejected yet confessing inklings as to the inner soul, so unidentified faces may nod along and smile,
men and women buckled into coats unhinging their laptops on airplanes, thirteen year old with One Direction fans clicking keys as dust dances in the afternoon air — the absolute heart of the tweet slinking out our restless minds archived for however long it breathes before it floats away.

Kathleen Radigan is a seventeen year old person, writer, and girl. Some of her previous publications include Hackwriters, Blood Lotus, The Newport Review, Innisfree Poetry, Pif, Prick of the Spindle, Constructions, and 13 Extraordinary Things. She hails from Rhode Island, where she spends most of her time doodling, drafting things, jumping on trampolines and trying to make it through high school in one piece.