Desktop

What is this stretch 
of wilderness
I see inside my screen? 
Alpine lake and talus slope— 
inside? No, it comes to me 
like heat from a bed
of campfire coals—light 
in this dark room
that turns me shades 
of blue, green, gray, 
awash in nature’s
standard hues. But what 
is it? Not the scene
but that which holds 
or shows or shoves 
the picture out— 
designed as if to be 
looked through, a lens
in which the world resolves 
itself. It says, I am nothing 
and you are here
in some version
of Muir’s old dream.
It says, forget me
and the wires that hiss 
and smolder, I am form
less as a cloud, where all 
your thoughts and images
reside, a distant ether—not 
the rows of sweating 
mainframes in their squat




brown bunker, not that dull 
hot weight and plastic 
hum. I will change
for you, if you ask me to, 
say water, I’ll be water, 
say room and I’ll be home, 
say sky, I’ll be the view, 
say mirror, I’ll be you.

Read more from Issue 17.1.