Screen memories
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Events—
the uneven application of desire
Events—
the spills that vent into disputed terrains
The focal points of lonely orbits—
all that is left from our ancestors
They build the homestead whose brackle bars our return
when we’ve been repatriated from harsh exiles of strayed foundation
They are the blessing we demand for suture,
brush strokes on the canvas of the last judgment
—all we have, and all we can ask for
See, the data engineer’s a wily operator,
trading on the harvest of max, min, and mean
But how is it that we, too, crouching in the cellars of our recognition,
drench our memories in brine
Palinopsia giving comfort to minds that languish apart
Once I drew up a pipette of impelled light
from an flickering chamber
She who entered after me
dangled a gentle nectar draped in fallen evenings
Our aperture is narrow, our horizon distant
We feed every creature that boards our ship
We embrace them with intangible thaumatropes
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Living-lying, those true-false memories are more than a bowline
They are dispositive
a rampart against lancing narrative—
an idyll of candor
a selfcraft
This poem was published in the Fall 2021 issue of Superpresent.
Andy Oram
June 10, 2020
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