We once worked as clerks
scanning moth-balled pages
into the clouds, all memories
outsourced except the fuzzy
childhood bits when I was an undersized girl with a tic,
they numbed me with botox
I was a skinsuit
of dumb expression, just fingerprints
over my shamed all I wanted was snow
to snuff the sun blades to shadow spokes,
muffle the drum of freeways, erase
the old realism but this smart snow erases
nothing, seeps everywhere,
the search engine is inside us,
the world is our display and now every industry
has dumped whole cubicles, desktops,
fax machines into developing
worlds where they stack
them as walls against what disputed territory
we asked the old spy who drank
with Russians to gather information
the old-fashioned way, now we have snow sensors,
so you can go spelunking
in anyone's mind,
let me borrow your child thoughts, it's benign surveillance,
I can burrow inside, find a cave
pool with rock-colored flounder,
and find you, half-transparent
with depression. |
| From Engine Empire: Poems by Cathy Park Hong. Copyright © 2012 by Cathy Park Hong. Reprinted with permission of W.W. Norton. All rights reserved. |
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