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Just Me & ChatGPT

All the sentences ChatGPT can’t write end up in my subconscious.
I’m pretty much a Luddite; I guess opposites attract.

I have more meds than apps, haven’t LIKED anything or anyone
in years; I think memes are the orphans of what could be if we ate
more roughage, completed the online course, added a dash of forgiveness.

On a June morning, two cups of coffee in, I fire up ChatGPT,
instruct it to write a poem about… ChatGPT; is it self-aware?

In a flash, three stanzas, the speed mindboggling—it’s verse, of course—
some dead and mixed metaphors, ornate, high concepts, words I’d never
juxtapose: it gilds the belly, bells the cow, squirms like a frog in a glass of milk.

It burrows like a virus, a precocious weevil down into my center, back up,
grows editor’s eyes, looking for a soft target, like my doughy middle-aged
English-degreed soul. I punch delete, unplug my computer, toss my phone,
hide under the bed, scribble a surrender note, no capitals

or punctuation, pure capitulation with a #2
pencil in illegible Catholic schoolboy
cursive on my
yellow legal
pad.

You win.

—
Ed McManis’ work has appeared in more than 70 publications, including Coolest American Stories 2025. His most recent chapbooks are The Zombie Family Takes a Selfie from Bottlecap Press and Trash Truck 7:38am (And Other Love Poems) from Finishing Line Press. Little known trivia fact: He holds the outdoor free-throw record at Camp Santa Maria: 67 in a row.

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