Spacetime

We Twitter, Tinder, Tumblr through eternity. Loquacious

text messages flit from fingertips, waves of data spill

through our skulls. Every cm2 of oxygen overflowing

with bank PINS, girls in yoga pants, the frequencies

of whale cries. Digital clouds brim with selfies and rain

videos on how to cook coconut shrimp. Sepia-filtered

photographs prowl for leaks in blood-brain barriers. Outside

our windows tree roots evolve into wires and birds trilling

sing the world electric. Every night we Facetime-kiss perfect

glass lips before bed and utter our sincerest prayers to our daily

blogs. We travel the world from screen to screen (breast

to breast incognito). The shortest distance between

home and work is a TV episode. Each hour is twenty songs.

We have lived a hundred lives in a breath and court ten lonely

women with a click. Emails trundle on invisible tracks of sky,

racing sexting winks and viral videos for our attention. Air

is composed of pixels and a radio bleeds white static. The world's

digital heartbeat only slows when I face the empty stare of a dead

battery. A boy on the subway scans my image without blinking.

Women download my face in a glance. A minute is tortured.

Lifetimes breed under each fingernail and wait to explode.

Bibliographical info

Yusuf Saadi, "Spacetime" from Pluviophile. Copryight © 2020 by Yusuf Saadi. Reprinted by permission of the publiser.

Source: Pluviophile (Nightwood Editions, 2020).

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