ekaterinn

So, between setting up my classroom and freaking out at my roster, I got off-track with Week of Poetry. I'm going to try to do the last couple of poems this week. Meanwhile, have a belated Day 5 (though I'm not entirely happy with it):

when he asks you to stay

when he asks you to stay,
you say ATTTCGCGCGA,
& count how DNA turns into RNA turns into proteins,
turns into your reasons for leaving;
you say that this continent makes you strange,
& familiarity is an addiction
you were never good at -

(you sleep on floors with satin sheets while your calluses grow soft,
& you lie & you lie & you lie)

there's lines on his face
like cracks in the ocean floor,
when he asks you to stay.

Lost Tongues

we are pixels,
you and I,
though sometimes I fear we are ghosts,
speaking in lost tongues,
through these modern plantation walls.

I sleep with books and blankets,
and your bracelet, and when I dream,
I dream of everything but you.

where is the love?
fingers tracing
the hollow of your neck -
I cannot say if they are
mine or yours
or someone liminally
luminous,
a third woman
who walks between
us,
trading our touches
for bytes on the hour.

will we go down to the sea together?
or will we stay on dry land,
and drown?

posthuman doom
this future, full of sexiest cookies
and library waffle shops
and no public wi-fi
in this future there is no unethical treatment of elephants
(there are no elephants)
in this future
you are growing up global
you are already dead
you are making starstuff
you are a new wave movement
in this future the secret is in our genes
in the systemic power structures
that replicate like tumor cells
in which the better angels of our nature
are twisted upside down
in this future where your rooms are full of
empty stuff and light
where kindness is common
and love the only mechanism of survival
in this future.

***
I blame kat_lair entirely. Also, sexy cookies to anyone who spots all the song references.