Cohort by Shane Schick

My generation was named by a novelist

who was never properly informed

that you can’t just make this stuff up,

and that if you absolutely must,

you could at least use more than one letter,

and that choosing the one that marks the spot

where treasure is normally found

might set expectations impossibly high.

If my generation had a voice,

nobody remembers what they said,

probably because they weren’t proclaiming

so much as muttering under their breath,

tired of being talked over by someone older

or ignored in favour of a demographic group

whose historical significance is so pivotal

they were born near the turn of a century.

Mine will never be called the greatest,

and our Roman numeral affinity aside,

we’d never even give ourselves a ten.

Still, we ventured across the shaky bridge

between analog and digital like no one else;

we mastered slacking before it became self-care.

Often overlooked, we rarely get very cross.

Maybe we’re more forgiving of mistakes because

we were given the mark of a question answered wrong.

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Shane Schick is the founder of 360 Magazine, host of The Owned Media Observer podcast and a fashion blogger at Menswhere.ca. He lives in Toronto with his wife and three children. More: shaneschick.com/poetry. Twitter: @shaneschick