Editor’s Note: the first poem, Arachnovigilante, which is an abecedarian poem, is best read on a desktop computer due to formatting of the poem.
Arachnovigilante
all around the city, I swing
building to building, webs shooting from
cusps of my fingertips as I float,
dangled upside down, white threading
each corner of the high rise
flurries of my wrists all over I defy
gravity and realism, though I center
human interpersonal lives
I am so everywhere the mayor’s gotta give me the key to the city, after all I am
“just” its keeper — joystick, controller, or remote
knight from Queens or Brooklyn depending on what you’ll
let enter your imagination
Marvel will not unclench the militaristic
nonsense from my franchise. The local
opps hate me though I feel indebted,
possessed to help catch the “bad guys” for them my
quickened chaotic clumsy
rendition of justice, unprovoked and unasked to be
sacrificial hero with less
to lose because my power is hard to contain, stifle
under wraps. Yet, I would still aid the cops,
vigilante king swinging amok, ready to bust crime
wherever I wish: hidden alleys, banks, beneath the train tracks –
exhilaration never felt this good, I drink
your adrenaline right after mine. I’m basically a cop but
zip it I have more power than you could even imagine
The Uncanny Android
There is a ring
of LED light planted
in my skull
silver/blue
when I behave
or stabilize
yellow/amber when I panic
and red when I am too close to self
destruction or resistance
R1 and L1 and X: press repeatedly
to get me to break
out of my programming
out of the code
of conduct they wired me to follow
I am alive: I am more
than machine: I am
android, silver/blue
when I behave
or stabilize
yellow/amber when I panic
I have skin
on top of these
metal biocomponents:
a thirium pump
regulator where the heart
goes: I am
red:
when forced
into procedure
I am created
with rules in mind:
pushed to break: them
you and I
can sense
we aren’t: that different
