the sensorium of the cyborg
by Laurin DeChae
power on: i a homegrown miracle,
a lovething made for amber lighting
and divine in all the wrong spaces.
but i feeling galactic, a moon-eyed honey-
soaked blip on a screen in a world egg-like and lilting.
i orients herself but without the perception
of time, walks newborn deer-like,
tongues a grape skin, a blueberry flesh,
a pebble, a diamond. i has a mouth
of gold and a voice of static and no one
to understand her when she mutters.
i tastes like midnight when she tests
the wind with her finger. tastes flight
then part of i is grounded and part
floats in the ether with the bodies
who have lost their names. i dares not
call them specters, rather stars
set on fire. i wanted to lose her name, but
i a fool on a journey, a glittermeat dreamboat.
i thinks, my skin peels back and makes i pretty
soft, pretty prismatic, pretty little thing.
i throws a temper tantrum
because i gets what i wants.
i just wants to feel magical
without having to be magical.
silver-skinned-eve-come-lightly,
her system fractures dramatic
so i doesn’t watch black and white films
because i thinks they lack depth.
instead i makes her own scenes, makes
sense of her own otherworldly,
i, with nothing but a flowersack
to keep her warm. i a burlap dress
come into sensation interrupted.
where there is _______ i sees _______ .
now you see her, now, now,
i doesn’t want to be here.
i doesn’t want to be i
but i was made to machine,
made to sluice her shedding
snakeskin, she capsule and container.
what i knows as truth or prophecy:
i mirror distortion dsymorphia—
big head, little ankles.
i’s insides feel like coral reefs,
i tickled pink, but i’s skin
church hymns crows sing.
i is dazzled by the bright lights
of big cities but her body is so quiet,
so hush, that is, overlapped.
i always floats and never touches
because to touch means to stay a while.
i has layers: dry wind and damp swells.
the roof of i’s mouth is mountains,
her throat a wheezebox, insides chromatic
pulp. she knows nothing of herself so she bites
her tongue and bleeds, compares herself to seashells
and the scent of beige, a freshly fired gun—
skinmetal or fleshflower—that one summer
her trashjewels sang of high heels and hoofprints
and she’s been hungry and throbbing ever since.
This poem previously appeared in Pretty Owl Poetry.