INCIDENTAL CAPTURE

by Celeste DeSario

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

 

META DATA

Timestamp: 2026-08-28 2:15 EST

Geographical Coordinates: 40.8458° N, 72.8972° W

Direction of Travel: Northbound

Vehicle Make: Ford Escape

Primary Color: American Flag Blue?

License Plate reads: TRACK THIS

 

Driving to Walmart

for a two-dollar pack of sticky notes.

Placing them over the T’s or the K on the plate—

My best defense.

 

And just like that,

The million-dollar system fails.

And I vanish.

 

Or better yet,

I take an alternative route

where no Flocks have yet taken root.

The safer option to being watched,

Photographed.

 

Can I duck a camera

while walking to grab a burger and root beer?

Maybe.

 

If the shutter clicks

and I’m in the background,

I’m an unwilling celebrity,

now in the database

Filed Under:

“Incidental Capture.”

 

You’re not their target

unless you’re an exclusive story.

 

Undocumented.

Dark-skinned.

A headline—

 

 If you’re from Norway.

Or Sweden.

Relax.

 But every tabloid needs an editor.

Who is that sitting at the stationhouse keyboard?

Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling through the candid shots?

A chorus of Troopers.

 

Officer Pacheco in Massachusetts,

typing a plate number into the void.

Tracking her

ex-girlfriend.

 

Officer Zahir in Kentucky,

searching for those unposed shots—

The ones that let us glimpse behind the curtain.

Running her fingers through her hair before

turning onto a street

whose name he doesn’t recognize.

 

Officer Klein in Texas

 looking for that Money Shot—

The one where she leans in for a kiss,

The one where she opens his front door with her own key.

       

Click.

Main Street.

 

Click.

Medical Center.

 

Click.

The new lover’s driveway.

 

Do the Troopers have his plate, as well?

 

Or are they tracking Hector?

Our undocumented farm worker?

The one who helps me pick out ripe melons,

carries my bags to my car,

asks about my day.

 

Pinpointing where he lives.

Where he works.

Where he can be apprehended.

Intercepted.

Arrested.

 

Those apples aren’t going to pick themselves, you know.

 

Remember the days

when we could go out into the world

and no one wanted to film us?

 Now Flock is the 21st-century paparazzi,

always watching

Recording

Cataloguing.

 

Once you step outside your door,

Your movements are saved to a hard drive.

A web woven tightly—

no escaping the fingerprint

the timeline of your movement—

one you never asked for and yet…

 

Uploading…

 

           That quick drive to the store—

           A sighting. A hit.

           That walk down the block—

           A capture.

 

            Flock.

      Eliminating crime

      In your neighborhood.

      In your life.

 

     The right to move unhampered,

     the right to exist undetected?

     No longer a given.

     For any of us.

     For all of us.

   Achievement Unlocked: Full Equality

Celeste DeSario writes poetry to process and make sense of life’s events. Her work is featured in The New Verse News, The SportsScribe, The Changing Times, The Ekphrastic Review, The Dissident Voice, and Three-Line Poetry. She lives in Shoreham Village, NY—a town where no Flock cameras have been sighted… yet.

WINNER OF THE INVERTEBRATE OF THE YEAR 2026

by Angela Sucich 

A neon green solar-powered slug that lives underwater is the winner of the increasingly popular Invertebrate of the Year competition run by the Guardian. The leaf sheep, Costasiella kuroshimae, triumphed in the global ballot after hundreds of thousands of readers around the world read about and shared their appreciation for the spineless creatures who make up the majority of animal life on Earth. Announcing the winner, the broadcaster and environmental campaigner Chris Packham said: “It’s very, very beautiful but also very smart too. It harvests photosynthetic material from the algae it feeds upon and builds its own solar panels.” — The Guardian, August 20, 2026

We need you right neon-now, leaf sheep.
Glowing your purloined sustainability,
loving your undeniable sea slug self.
Don’t dim on our account,
we’re here for the freak show.
Can’t pass up a contest, an elimination
round. Which one will win this time? 
The polls have spoken. 
It was closer than we’d like.
But your shock of green leaves, 
appendages, cerata, etcetera, 
that normally let you blend in,
are waving at us as you come out on top.
Your ovine face munching on photosynthetic 
algae as you build your own energy 
palace. You’re a solar, solo FU 
to the world, if not its mascot.
Not chosen for cuteness but to cut
to the chase: We all want something 
to love, to distract, to distance, to despise. 
To read into your kleptoplastic grazing, 
stealing of shine, hermaphroditic egg-laying, 
our own pride and loathing. A sheep’s 
an easy metaphor to talk about flock
behavior, flock cameras, information 
gathered, animals herded even as the algae 
disappears. To be an invertebrate that wins
the game is to answer from its gut
a question: Do swallowed chloroplasts 
know whose body they’re lighting up?


Angela Sucich's poems appear or are forthcoming in RHINO, Nimrod, Southern Humanities Review, Consequence, and SWWIM. She was honorably mentioned for the Pablo Neruda Prize (2021) and Francine Ringold Award (2020). A poet with a PhD in Medieval Literature, Sucich published a chapbook, Illuminated Creatures (Finishing Line, 2023), which won the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition. She lives in Leavenworth, Washington, with her husband and daughter.

POST-ELECTION BLUES

by Peter Calder

after seeing a small rally of people in George Square, Glasgow (file photo above) following the recent election results in the UK

He says they’re
all in on it.
Every single 
bastard one.
 
They know what 
they are doing.
Death of Scotland.
That’s what he says.
 
Politicians. Scientists. 
Journalists.
All of them—
Liars.
 
A ripple of hands
startles a pigeon
and sends the flock
soaring above the square.
 
But this Rally—he says
is rewriting history.
A pocket of truth 
in a new skin suit.
 
And I guess he’s right.
It is just skin 
holding us together.
We’re all in on it.
 
The left. The right. 
The indifferent.
Every single one of us 
wrapped up in it.
 
From Westminster 
to Glasgow lies
a body, bruised 
in patches of blue.
 
It happens almost
unnoticed. The birds
loop and scatter 
on the ground.
 
An old man
tosses crumbs—
and the flock
follows.

Peter Calder is a Primary School teacher living and working in Glasgow. He is the co-founder and editor of the Hull based magazine Descent Spread and has had poetry and short stories published in various UK-based magazines.