THE FIRST ANNUAL CRISPIES AWARDS: PART V: that which struck my fancy in the biggest ever way over the course of this year

If I had to choose, well, I can't. There are no bad Rob MacDonalds, unless you are talking about a Rob MacDonald who doesn't live in Mass and doesn't write poetry and doesn't edit SIXTH FINCH--maybe a Rob MacDonald who owns a McDonalds or something in Florida.

No such luck here. This is the Mass Rob of Sixth Finch etc. and I don't know what to do. I can't choose between the various and lovely MacDonalds available to me so I close my eyes and spin around ten times get really woozy and then plunk my pinky finger down on the computer screen and find one, perfect like all the rest, RING THEORY, courtesy of Diode, here, below.

Ring Theory
by Rob MacDonald


Just as we’re sailing a small boat
straight into a big storm, my dad
passes me the paper, points out
an article explaining that the world
needs more mathematicians. These days,
the data floats like ghosts, no one
listening to the whispering.
From somewhere far below the boat,
a charcoal cloud, another. A jolt,
and the jib rips in half. Halyards crack—
live wires. I go fetal, dumb, feel nothing.
We survive—who knows why? Later,
I find the paper in the galley, see
a Tiffany’s ad for rings: precious,
senseless things that encircle us.