Colony by Jill Khoury | Really System: Issue Seven

Colony

Jill Khoury

While I rebuild
my brainscape,
he can't touch it.
I won't even let him watch
while I dig my hands
into conductors
rampant, untamed. He wants
to stick his fist in too,
rearrange my labile village.

When I deliberate, cables twist,
revolve as one long stalk.
Lights blink a cipher
not for him to see.
When resistance
fails, the connection
shorts. I burn a faulty circuit
around my desire
for mechanoid
strangers,
for a bio-inspired,
well-tooled actuator—

I shake my head no
and fibers sway coolly.
An automatic eye
spies his colonizers
on the far horizon.
The iris narrows.
Synapses fire.

Jill Khoury is interested in the intersection of poetry, visual art, gender, and disability. She edits Rogue Agent, a journal of embodied poetry and art, and has a chapbook Borrowed Bodies (Pudding House 2009) and a full-length collection, Suites for the Modern Dancer (Sundress 2016). She tweets @sundaygray, and you can find her on the web at jillkhoury.com.

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