Poem of the Month
Internetahlagy

By Tanya Evanson

Published on June 3, 2019

Before Records or RAM, radio, radiation
We had slowness. A real root directory. We were tight with the world.

Now, we’re in all probability cloud inline, online. Yin Yang binary
Numbers in time. Fractions of our former, warmer selves.

We like. We link. We love. We save. Silently.
Collectively suckling our baby, Internetahlagy.

Our baby has meta-emotions. Baby’s got emotions about emotions.
Data about data. Wind about wind.

Baby be metaphysical. Physical without being physical.
Mindful without being mindful, and even more then.

You, me and baby, we move so little but we travel so great.
World moves beyond world at this rate.

Non-stop-this, sidewalk-that, we are walking heads down at clay tablets
Sumerian-style. Extinct papyrus out.

Is this singularity? Are we merging with artificiality?
Machine versus Mind. Nanonaked. Divine.

Will you tap my arm to expose USB porn?
Frontal lobe googlehorn, I’m googling as I speak.

Cloud computing as I eat. Instagramming in my sleep.
All the googalicious googlelatarians feast.

Eat my Facebook! Tweet, swallows, tweet. Tweet tweet.
We like. We link. We love. We save. Silently. Internetahlagy.

We get juice from a box made from oil, sand and farts.
Silicon chip make we blue-lit. A hard drive from the sun.

Finger-tappin. Interwebbin. Radiatin.
Far from fire. O how I miss the time

When palms touched nothing to tell a tale and the light was a fire
Between us. We could really see what we were saying.

We like. We link. We love. We save. Silently.
Internetahlagy. Internetahlagy.

More Poetry

Press

Indeed you miss the point, my friend. It does stand stubbornly guarding mile after mile of soft and useless dust and wind out of the north with a low whine and the lying mouth of the news— the bitch!—the words and weather both are cutting.

No Justice No Peace

Again.
Another bloody body 
another child dying while

doing the unthinkable
eating food, going home,
eyes meeting impatient suspicion.

Abundance

The streets of the living are among the streets of the dead, the houses of the living among the houses of the dead – three centuries of dead packed close, stacked twelve deep. On stones, scissors mark a tailor, grapes announce abundance.