i traveled the world. it was fine.

::  lists  ::

genres
not-genres

survival
surveillance

::   lists  ::

bath salts
meds
nail stuff
grapefruit juice
keys
protein
tequila
other keys
gin
grapefruit juice
other other keys
hair

::   lists   ::

things i won’t be answering:
emails
voice mails
really any mail without a stamp
phone calls
call outs
call ins
ungrounded theories
anything that begins “can i touch...”

::  states  ::

potentially
pointless

surveillance
survival

::  states  ::

selfish
she invites
all the curses
(no curse for you!)

::  states  ::

how are we all so busy now
again

::  lists  ::

my name
the way my name
is said

yawn

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“I wonder where lines might be drawn between our digital and material selves—word and flesh / photo-tag and skin-tag. Can we, anymore, break free of our machines to locate or resuscitate our bodies? Whether we are ever post-pandemic or not, what remains of our ability to be—alone or together—in public? This poem refuses even these rhetorical questions. To bridge the before-times, the in-times, the end-times, the now-times, the what-is-times, this poem remembers movement and static both. It coughs the sputtering fragments it finds of leftover language. It exhausts itself easily.”
—Samiya Bashir