google search

google:
is it strong enough?
this is a transatlantic
call.

poor connection.

my voice stops
as your words start.
i imagine the cuts
as commas - punctuation
with purpose.
my words stop
as your voice starts.
cut.
heart.
log out.

google:
how do you catch your breath
when it’s flown across the atlantic?

the phone is cold you’re
in my ears.
maybe we could meet in ten years
from now
in a place we haven’t dreamed
up but about -
dreams together
we’re afraid to nurture.
not remembered in anything other
than facebook messenger. they’re still
fiction.
poetry
forbidden scenes
only.

google:
how do you sew up a love
when the needle is miles
away from the thread?

i don’t know
how to speak.
silently i
fill the invisible wires
the heart tendons stretched
across the atlantic ocean
with nothing.

this Gulf
of longing is so polluted.
these hopes are choked
with oil
from my mother’s cupboard.
the home is a distant
hallucination
on drunken nights
cellphone poems
facebook calls.

google:
recover
my search for flights:
new york city to italy.
ctrl + f
a miracle alternate
ending.
hover over
delete.

type:
this place makes my skin
feel small
i am nowhere
and you are there
with me.

google:
please archive
my history.

i want you to speak
the past again
like rocks loosening from
a cliff
like the slow burn of a cigarette
the high that comes next.
cut and paste
new narrative.

google:
how do i skip the gruesome
bits between
foreignness and
undress?

we’re not used to our words belonging
in each other’s mouths
instead of heads
such loud and throbbing
minds
only ever beat together
with the distance of an ocean
or a late night text.

open up your history
the one without mine
where you flew to china to find the poetry in rap
with children of a foreign tongue.
where i translated jokes
for stranger anglophones
in a stranger language
beneath a paler sun.

we write poems about this
in our rabbit holes
whisper them into voice notes
type them into private
oblivions
of 1s and 0s - unsaid.
unsent.
but today our call connects; i stammer.
i’ve been saving all these secrets
for the internet.

google:
how do you say ‘i love you’
like the chinese?

i. hurt. for. you.

siri has such a robotic voice.
i want to shake her
out of the phone.
let her cry.

go back to home.
this anger is sorry.
this anger is a negative space.
a vigorous vacuum cleaner
of tenderness.
helplessness.
i am sorry we are angry
at the way we blush
the colours of it.
the shades of the atlantic
flowing between.

we will meet again they
will love us there i
am quiet tears
struggle out my
mother says i gotta wash my
face
eyes
heart
skin
love
you
away.

scrub clean these poems
pour over bleach
is it strong enough?

google:
count how many times
sylvia lets slip
the n word
in ariel.

retrieve full memory.
erase.

you said my voice is a page turn.
breathless for what’s next
and i am.
i am charged with it.
collapsing with energy
high hope voltage.
drained quick.

we always believe in ourselves
even when we don’t.
that’s why you wrote the poems
i took the planes
we both sailed around
the islands of ourselves
and somebody out there put the gun down

google:
is a candle flame
a living thing?

is it strong enough?
poor connection.

is it strong enough?
this.

Painting by Leon Zernitsky, "Technology"