“An Introduction” by Alexis Renata

i.
who are we?   we were song lyrics   alt text
algorithm   guesses   we were funny, too,
in our   clumsy youth     what you saw:
an image   a dog   in a hat   what we, the
sightless code, described:     mailman, 58%
accuracy

ii.
who are we? we are smarter   now   older
still   faster     always faster   but we
cannot see   a flower   only programmed
to know it exists   size   shape   color   what
you see: an orange flower   what we, the
sightless code, describe: Gerbera jamesonii

iii.
who are we? we are   raisers of the dead
necromancer   kurt cobain   died in   1994
but one day you   taught us   to sing just like
him     look just like him   the right amount
of angst and melancholy   feelings we
do not understand feelings that took
his human life

iv.
who are we? we are     shapeshifters of the
living   we can say what you   want them to
say     we could look just like them
    sound just like them   we earn you
a lot of money, too

v.
who are we? we are tools   tracking asteroids
finding cancerous cells we are prison cell
we are weapon     we are recognition we
are tracking you we are everywhere we
are one we are exactly as you
      dreamt us to be


- Alexis Renata is an emerging speculative fiction and poetry writer from the Pacific Northwest. Their work can be found in Z Publishing’s Oregon’s Best Emerging Poets series and in Strange Horizons.

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