SURVEILLANCE STATE POEM
someday we will die digitally
& biologically too & nobody
will be left to hurt from our
absence: do we call this
the end-times or some-
thing less extravagant?
where will you be when it’s
my turn to decompose? will
you feast on me again the
way you have done in this
life? will you make friends with
the maggots & the wires that
will live in my lungs from now on.
where will we put all our heart
emojis & what of surveillance?
are the ones who watch us a special
kind/breed/thing/ /sort of object?
will they become earth also? or is there
somewhere else they must die? what
of this apocalypse: the waterfalls are waiting
to murder us. some of us are waiting
to let them.
Umang Kalra is a writer from India and the founding EIC of VIBE. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Wax Nine, Lucy Writers’ Platform, and elsewhere. They are a two-time Best of the Net Anthology finalist and a Pushcart nominee. Read more at umkalra.persona.co.
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