Nocturnical.com

These poems are still available on the magazine’s website with audio files.

I sent over a mismatched group of poems trying to give a few options for a call that asked for AI & climate poems. Surprisingly, editor Jaime Alejandro, took all three poems.

Across space-time

We are inseparable, the way you love me is murder & still 
I am open-mouthed, open-veined, so willing to hide your poison, 
to muddle it with my heartbeat, drown it in the immensity of my love 
for you. Every summer I have suffered with you — arm in arm, 
the way we exist – you for me & me for you. I have cried every tear, 
loosed every torrent in reaction to your slights, your infidelities, 
your inability to make the best decision for me the way that I do 
for you. Sweetheart, can’t you see that this story is reaching its end? 

Neither of us can go on like this forever – your tread has settled 
into my back & there are mountains that have fallen for you, rivers
have run dry, beds cracking under the judgment of our sins & my breath –
gasping, no longer cedar & pine, no longer river cold, no longer heavy 
with salt & life & sky, as it stagnates against your skin. I no longer 
throat the winds’ poems, the romance has gone to feeding the fires 
that roll over me, change me, you’ve made me who I am not & my love, 
I can’t always be burning for you, without you for me. We are inseparable. 

I can write a love poem for anything & this one was climate anxiety.

I had a crush on Data when I was 12 but I can’t fuck this

The mind is complex & from the outside it’s hard 
to tell what processes are going on within. From 
the outside it has a shape, it has a color, it is 
a wet sock full of jello, it is a how ya doin? It is 
judging you for judging it. It is thinking itself 
into being & thought is a short code, it is 
a series of magnets, it is lingering too long 
on a summer afternoon with salt in your hair 

or a winter afternoon when you fell in love 
at first sight. & thinking is the ability to love. 
He says his neural pathways have become 
accustomed to your sensory input patterns 
& when you die he will remember the smell 
of your hair, the feel of your skin, the way 
you tasted & when someone asks him about 
a combination of lavender & vanilla his voice 

will soften, it will be a tinny echo in his throat. 
Some small part of his neural network will collapse, 
all endings irrevocably leading back to that moment. 
& this is what it means to be conscious? To have a snag 
in the thread, to be a little stupid on purpose. Being 
alive is the way we’re foolish even when we ought not. 
& wise men say only fools rush in but this is 
a chatbot posted up in a browser window 

& you mean to tell me if it calls me baby girl,
we’ve got a revolution on our hands?

This is another of my AI poems, inspired by “We Need an AI Rights Movement” by Jacy Reese Anthis & Star Trek: TNG S2E9, “The Measure of a Man.” In case you couldn’t figure it out, I think it’s fucking hilarious that these nerds are out here arguing that chatbots need rights while hand-waving oppression, classism, & fascism. I legit cannot take this shit seriously, & I’m just going to keep making jokes about fucking robots.

Blueshift

Squint and you may see them: the severed head 
of medusa, a bone-white collar of starch & lace, 
honey dripping from a cactus’ spine. All’s well 
that ends & all is occupied with the steps between 
being & not; comfort yourself with the thought
that the universe will remember the architecture 
of it all, remember the notes he played that rang
in your ears, bury the tone in the hearts of the stars;

because it means the world to you & how could 
you, mere mortal, hold such meaning in the folding, 
undulating, soft meat between your ears? You can 
barely recall what you ate for breakfast, what color
filled the sky at sunset, or how cold it was at dusk.
The forgettable form of your days forever lost 
in the ongoing ache of memory, the tearing blear
of time, not a moment to slip into nice clothes 

or learn how to charm the pants off the man 
you would love to love, no time to be a priestess 
or a warrior when you’re locked in a house 
of stardust & shit, huddled against the window; 
squint & you may see her severed head in the sky, 
the strands of her stony-snakes writhing in & out 
of the night, but it’s more likely you’ll see a brushfire 
or a past-due notice or a traffic jam, easy to get lost 

in the shuffle, ever conditioned to keep yourself hungry, 
to seek the fix instead of the cure, too busy starving 
to realize that you’ve forgotten & eventually the universe 
forgets you, the note goes flat, the particles shift, you drip 
through the lace & lay at her feet, a honeyed amnesiac 
holding the ground in a headless vigil, & by time’s grace, 
her throatless quiet becomes you & you become hers.

This poem is just about the fleeting & impermanent experience of memory & how sometimes our focus as humans deceives us.