[dVerse] October 29 - The Spellchecker Has No Objections

At nine, the inbox Mondayed my pulse
on a perfectly innocent Thursday.

First came a gentle reminder.
Then another.
Then one marked urgent
with the friendliness
of a knife wrapped in tissue paper.

None of them
felt particularly gentle.

By noon, I had semicoloned my answer
to the employee satisfaction survey:

Yes, insofar as the rent;
no, insofar as the body.

Human Resources wanted
a single selection.

Strongly Agree.
Agree.
Neither Agree nor Disagree.
Disagree.
Strongly Disagree.

There was no box
for my body has been attending meetings
my mind was never invited to.

I selected Neither.

Apparently, that was neutral.
Apparently, I was doing well.

At five, the crows asterisked the sky
above the bus stop...
small black footnotes to the city's claim
that nothing unusual had happened.

I carried the unfinished form home
beside an electricity bill,
a crumpled receipt,
a list of un-bought groceries,
and the remains of a lunch
I had eaten without tasting.

That night, I opened a blank document.

I wrote:
I would like to resign from—

The sentence stopped.

I read it twice.

The spellchecker objected
to every verb I had invented.

It had no objections
to the job description.

~ Oizys.

Written for dVerse Meeting the Bar: Verbing Your Verse, hosted by Björn Rudberg on October 29, 2026. The prompt encouraged turning nouns and adjectives into verbs, particularly transitive ones, to make metaphors act rather than merely describe. I used Mondayed, semicoloned, and asterisked. The spellchecker is entitled to its opinion. And, I am entitled to mine.

[dVerse] October 27 - The Suggestion Box Has No Opening

At the annual celebration of Respect,
the family unveils a suggestion box.

It has no opening.
We applaud the workmanship.

An uncle explains
that disagreement is a Western disease.
The ceiling fan asks why
and is switched off for insolence.

The eldest man eats first.
The youngest woman serves everyone.

This, apparently, is not a hierarchy.
It is heritage,
and heritage cannot be questioned
while the dal is hot.

I raise my hand.

Everyone looks alarmed.
An aunt whispers: sit down.

I haven't stood up. But.
Already I have broken a tradition.

"Just one question," I say.
"If respect is mutual,
why does it have
only one direction of travel?"

The uncle says our ancestors
must be turning in their graves.

I look at their portraits,
perched above the kitchen stove,
their glass faces
spotted with the oil
of a thousand invisible dinners.

Perhaps they are turning.
Perhaps they would like
to face the sink for once.

Nobody laughs.

The uncle declares
that humour is the death of civilisation.

This is unfortunate,
because someone has just asked me
to make him another cup of tea.

I make it.
I do not add sugar.

It is a small rebellion.
I am informed
it has ruined the family.

The ceiling fan resumes
its revolutions
without permission.

~ Oizys.

Written for dVerse Poetics Tuesday: The Art of Irreverence, hosted by Punam on October 27, 2026. The prompt asked us to write an irreverent poem questioning authority, convention, or the supposedly sacred, without confusing irreverence with cruelty. This is about respect. Or its remarkably selective distribution.