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.

DELICIOUSLY DECIDUOUS SKY POEM TO REPLACE ALL POLITICS FOR 26 MINUTES

by Dennis Mahagin

Believe it or not, there once
was a sky, and construing itself
as de rigeur, congressman, it cradled
us all, mostly over
indigo,
with whipped cream
shots and espresso poured
on the moon at night, at night, this sky
whispered,
keep the spirits up, alright?
Then the wind
blew as March flew into super Tuesday,
and on, through May, ions
up there laughing
like icons
at sepia's stomp and dust affair,
low-lying
fluffy white ones where they met
and vanquished a Trump
in an August
sun dance.
Hard to forget, alderman, that sky, the happy,
happy contrails in air, creamy inchworm lariats
likened to smoke rings from Dunhill
cigarettes, they stayed
up there, aka "streams" -- -- -- -
and wouldn't let
a single jet
fall. Now I pray
to all expanses, with not a little fear
at the turning away, paparazzi bandolier, whir
of gears, arrows and lances
and ever narrow
slings and hot air and bullets and
drones and hot air, broken
wings and drones, and wings and
drones, moreover, in rotation, in stark
repetition mister
honorable mayor, fly-byes, a sky
up there, leaving nothing to chances
nowadays indifferent at best
and maybe neither
does she care?
Certainly
she's up there still, and will, --
this is where I invite
you all, earnest chaplains shepherding
the campaign in the ass,
only to consider
the reach of the grasp of the stately
previously unmentioned
Tree,
an aspen, peach, willow,
say, larch or
even weeping cottonwood,
while he ( the tree) glances
up, and nods yes, yes, affirmative,
yes, quite reassured
to every branch,
to the very rings,
a sky has got
your back,
says he (the tree), and which
one has ever willfully
been mistaken? Nor had occasion
to worry, to hasten
unto centuries? They are constituents,
with roots in the community.
She’s not going to
fall, despite
cries from the
left ( right? )
oh, she might send a
squall or two, tough love running
with thunder across
the sun, until the general
is done. Unlike a politician and natural
lies aside, lonely guys
( such as I )
must surmise, in order to decide:
and so I vote to try
to simply seize my slice
of sky. Look up,
one time, there’s the blessing
on the heels
of a peppermint sneeze,
let’s make it a quorum, see?
that it lasts:
it's lemon
merengue, senator
and dissolves
pretty

fast.


Dennis Mahagin is a poet from the Pacific Northwest, currently living in Montana. His collections of verse can be found, here, and there: And well, worth it. Maybe.