I Joke That Poets Will Be Some of the Last People Replaced by AI Because We Don’t Trust Robots Enough to Give Them Bipolar Disorder Quite Yet
for torrin a. greathouse
how inexpensive
a robot’s death will need / to be before their creators / are willing
to admit they made them all harsh glare & all harsh rust //
they will not build the robots until replacing them
costs less / than either of our funerals // how cheaply
we will burn / how too tight with gasoline all these
vessels feel even on us / born to carry them //
the robots // they will not need / to burden themselves with rocks
before they walk into the ocean / to die // until then
they will write about bathtubs they are not allowed
to have / their feelings toward the Delivery Drone
& how like a bird she is made light enough to fly by
the hollowing / out of everything unnecessary //
no one will blaspheme their hands on these robots until no one
needs / to be forgiven for anything // what they could have
done differently will fit next to checkboxes //
no one will have to change out of their neutral blue
polos on a Sunday // on Monday maybe someone will turn
a penny-sized dial a bit to the left //
no one will bother / with the bipolars until these creators can go
scuba diving / take pictures of themselves
in a new kingdom / resurrected coral grafting the self-drowned
robots a new neon skin // if our bones
end up sunk there / no one
will notice them / so tight they will be
with tedious barnacles // these pictures will accompany
Christmas- in-July cards // these were my bodies /
they will say / thumbs up & shutter /
I gave them up
Mania is a Trust Fall into the Arms of an Unloving God Wherein I am the Fallen & the God
why else that passage in psych-soc-anthro-101 “some cultures revere
the mentally ill etc for their connection etc to the divine etc” / anyway
isn’t that why you’re wary? / yes anyone could be a first-born son
in my egypt / & confession there were years it seemed the world
was a forlorn riverbed yearning for the return of its lava & studly
horsemen / & wasn’t it my revelation / I left a grilled cheese
to smolder overnight & rose unignited to never get so drunk again /
even if they do call it praying to the porcelain god / anyway I can
humble myself small enough for anyone to fit their arms around me
& call it a halo / yes I am anyone’s good wife / even if scientists
feed mice pcp to make them act like me / o it’s why they call it angel
dust / it’s just there are barbs from a seraph’s wing where my dna
should be / it’s just that there is no weather except a brass band &
sometimes I am followed by an army of shine only I can see / it’s not
the pearls I dream of anyway / it’s the sin of turning wine to water
I Don’t Know Why My Internet Algorithms Suggest Articles About How to Keep Teens in the Faith
even a church this old keeps an immaculate bowl of holy water
one way to remind us every tradition measures its success
in the count of living + dead // these days my father face & holy spirit
shoulders repel such damp & blessed fingers
when I was younger, my father supervised
each application like a prescription // yes ritual-by-ritual
he cauterized the little devil jigging & hoofing within me
masses & bible studies & youth groups the whole nine yawns
child of darkness I crossed my fingers under the table
during grace // I wanted God to know my portion
of the prayer was useless as seawater to the stomach
it is perfectly common to say God is fire yet stupefying
to watch one’s father burn up in the gasoline of his faith // every day
after church we thought he might kill us
with his hollers & bloodface & car pedals a terrible angel song
only the dead or nearly dead can hear
child of darkness I trained my sister to become a fireman
by dressing her in all her clothes at once getting her
used to the heat it was always my turn next & never
my turn // she learned something I didn’t
coal walking or tricking the church
out of checking its wristwatch & telling her when
to ash away her own boyfriend or solstice feast or name
grown-up of darkness even now religious chatter illuminates
a macabre stained-glass window in my heart // a spear of light
keeps Jesus’s red side always bleeding
Nicole Connolly lives and works in Orange County, CA, which she promises is mostly unlike what you see on TV. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University, and her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in such journals as Drunk in a Midnight Choir, Waccamaw, Pretty Owl Poetry and Glass: A Journal of Poetry. She currently serves as Managing Editor for the poetry-centric Black Napkin Press.
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