Thud. Ark. Enlightenment.

It was reported that the companies

that built, then ruined, GoogleMaps and made

iTunes a hash and ruined blogs have stayed

mostly white and mostly dude—but please

it’s not for lack of trying! What this shows

is that our self-styled meritocracies

are skeins of self-indulged affinities,

where merit is a mirror reflecting bros.

Last weekend on the Carolina shore

we swam in the ocean; one of us worried about

spiders (spiders?); what I didn’t say

was the pale crabs we watched darting out

along the water line were also spiders

in a way; we are all judged, at the end of the day

by distant gods to whom we’re all outsiders.