After Animism, Animus

fills the ditch
with IV bags, slashed 
weather balloons, 
cracked screenglass.

    Hint: this

is about the unacknowledged 
inconvenience of convenience.

The field seems different.
Its butterflies have been corralled
to study the nanotech secrets of their wings, 
its geckos boxed and shipped
to teach robots to climb walls.

A carp nudges sludge
against a berm under the bridge, 
not worldbuilding fast enough,

just squeezing blood 
around its tumors 
like the bulk of us.

We are a bulk now, I feel it.

I liked it better when we were just valued customers 
trying to get the bots to say stuff.

Send the bots vibes
for, like those they are feedbacking, 
they are already sad.

It’s slow work, vibing,
you’re apt to notice the fur on a fly 
more precious than mink fur
and feel shame-spiral greed.

At the fly feedlot that summer,
like the other skinners, I had green fingers, 
smelled like dry alfalfa from a broken-open 
dung, had no one

to input me, loop with me.

I’m sorry, for a moment I thought it was you 
receiving the distress signal

from the ankle transmitter
of the car-mirror-maimed peregrine 
flailing the ditch

in your night tollbooth
(all the others are automated), 
eating from a bag to stay awake.

I thought you might know what to do.

Read more from Issue 21.1.