Kirstin Allio

Paired

Does leaving your socks around mean something? About me? But I was
a coward, drowning myself out with the snap and thud of the clothes
dryer. I wanted to speak in the same voice I used to conduct my
thoughts. My thoughts were panoptic. My speech was chronic.
Compliance would keep our heads above water, even as our hostilities
ebbed and flowed—

We were that lonely, decadent and lonely as a lunar vacation. In the
courtyard our pumpkin wintered into a paper lantern that paired with
the moon.

Machine Age

I come from a family of families. Nobody’s single, nobody’s without at least a single child. So when fertility came in like a lion and out like a lamb I turned vegetarian.

            The Internet had become an instinct, no longer pop culture, depth perception, destination for top deals. It responded to our wants with wants of its own. I had to get up ten or twelve times a night, otherwise my mind separated into little TVs. I’d stand at the window and watch the street which was unnaturally live. The blinds gave me sandals, the curtains gave me wings.

            Was I the politician or the mystic? The Internet had upped the ante, it was the antechamber to everything, the preamble, nothing ever began.

            I picked up where I left off, cataloguing broken machines. Not just meat slicers but label-makers, leaf-blowers, home-use ultrasound wands.

            I wouldn’t buy the brand that belonged to the overlord who drove darkness from the sky. On the other hand, I protested behaviors rather than cars. Cows. I felt I saw through the swapping out of gas for electric, the way change was a cycle, I wanted action not activism, I tigermothered my son’s school. How were animals not people? I demanded that the Disney versions be cast away. The five and six-year-olds tugging on the teacher’s finger teats, soft as starfish, stared up at me.         

Post-Poetics

When the world sheds language, it leaves a hairless comb. My eyesight
is dented looking at distance. My thoughts are dog-eared, dormant
greeting cards from the cardboard tower in the post office.