RING

by Alejandro Escudé




A Motherboard report found Ring lacking basic security measures for preventing hackers from hijacking the devices. —threatpost, December 18, 2019


In the family of moments, there are unique
and strong passwords—living, bobbing like
ripe apples on the Tree of Knowledge, no snakes
coiled, ready to speak to you, to impersonate
God. The voice that comes at us from the ether
demanding we “Wake up!” like Mayakovsky’s sun.
We know better than to repeat our usernames,
passwords strung around our lives like
the rings around Saturn—a tall pot boiling,
a crackle from the device, and it is someone
talking to our daughter from the beyond.
The Ghost of Christmas Past? A horrible clown?
But why urge the child to destroy her room?
What a pinch one feels from this new reality.
Isn’t funny the things people will bring into
their house? A discarded needle, a live mine,
a tiger, a splintered chair, a vial of cyanide.
Once someone speaks to you from a device,
you cannot wash that out of your hair. It’smore
than an experience, it’s a like an experience
turned object; one you buy for the holidays
for instance, a device on which to order
a pizza or a Nintendo Switch box filled with
condoms and soda caps. All of human life
reduced to a child’s bedroom, liquified
on a small screen, the pinks pinker than pink
and the dark voice darker than darkness.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

MY LITTLE TYRANT

by Sergio A. Ortiz

Image source: The Onion

And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

—Donald Trump

You stopped to desire what you looked at,

you stopped to invent what you looked at,

but you were never at a standstill. 

You understood the docks, the places
where salt is a blind lady seated on your soul,
where foam gnaws at the base of everything,
with its small teeth resembling
the quicksand of what is forgotten,
the sites where old anchors and barges
of oversize engines oxidize in droppings
of seagulls and pelicans, the small white tumults
where peace and movement intertwine
their nets in the old-fashion-way of the sea,
the landscapes that surrounded you
without you knowing how far from your imagination,
your most intimate arguments could travel.

There is a sky full of vessels that eyes contemplate
from below tears, from where your gaze runs out of breath.

An eternity that anyone could say,
is worn out by extreme use, fondled by the dead,
softened by the complaints of the sick,
an afternoon that is sinking like a boat
in a landscape that belongs to nobody else but you.

You understood most of this,
you distrusted your desire, but it was your saliva
that shone on the teeth of your desire,
you were the doughy dough someone chewed
the dough that ended up in your stomach.
It was your hand, the one with which you said goodbye.

That is why you hesitated in the middle of the night,
you heard the trees get lost in their branches,
you felt the wind halt, as if in search of something
between the folds of the curtain, you heard the dead
laugh in their holes imitating moles,
you will discover oblivion, let it walk into your bedroom
dressed as a butler to announce what is already served at the table.

Unintentionally you will dine with great appetite and at the end,
leaving the napkin on the table, you will praise the menu.

Sergio A. Ortiz is a gay Puerto Rican poet and the founding editor of Undertow Tanka Review. He is a two-time Pushcart nominee, a four-time Best of the Web nominee, and a 2016 Best of the Net nominee. His poems have been published in hundreds of journals and anthologies. He is currently working on his first full length collection of poems, Elephant Graveyard.