O body become Bot

                                               By Heidi Lynn Staples

                                                O Anti O Antiphons

O man-made machine who fakes man as Thing and Foresaker, the rope

              shipped around our neck of the woods, Come to enslave us to

              our owned hours, O body become Bot

O Smart Phone, who flames from the mount if a screen, waiting in the

              pockets, lights in the mall's smallest darkness, Come, recognize

              our vices.

O keyboard O Facebook, and Social Media, and WWW, whose ever-

             widening “Buyer!” has been let loose and pawned the words:

             Come and bring forth “Friend,” let us bow together before your

             Cyclops.

O keyboard and clicker of the Digital Age, who can recognize my face

             from among the masses and hunt me down and destroy me from

             any remote location: Come, come and watch over us.

O biotech implant, over become lover, O biotech Virus of Neural

             Plaquing, how skull no longer offers isolation.

O Predator Drone, O Hummingbird Drone, O bee Drone Swarm how

             hovers: Come, and let us watch a man-made machine unmake a

             man unto forsaken thing, Come into the classrooms of our youth

             and hear how we laugh.

O robotic nurse, who can sing, who can dance, who stands ready with

             outstretched metal rubber-encased arms and movement-tracking

             tearless eyes before our bodily suffering she shall not waver:
             Come and deliver into their beds our soft bodies, pliable babies,

             into your arms, into your arms, into your arms, forever more

             and more . . .  

From The American Poetry Review, November-December 2014.