Archeology & Chrysalis
by Michelle Noteboom
[ poetry - december 02 ]
Archeology
Cells cluster within surrounding soil. Brittle, intrusive jigsaw of organic measurements and informed fractal space. Technicians employ magnetic plaster rods and sequences to prepare. They stare through electron microscopes at life-sized binding forces, as if disentangling the future could enable a breathing creature. Imagine undertaking a complete organism of flesh only to unfold it in a semi-virtual diffraction zone. Use interstitial identification to fill in cracks in extracted earthen boxes. Excavate spinal implants and lay each piece on the skin like jewelry. Clay, special mechanical organs.
Bionic malfunctions meld in constructs of computerized worlds and remanent simulating dreams. Who is - will be - the god with myoelectric limbs? What of the neuromimetic invented thing? The hominid of emergence burgeons forth from the loam. Biotic figures reconstituted, metal body bits in a united dwelling space beyond epoxy form. Androgynous underneath and ghostly confident, wearing optical implants to eye across time.
Chrysalis
radiographic memory wires out over the horizon reaching past or beyond
a tumid moon in a twilit zone
cables cylinders cranium
mouthpiece fitted over flesh
Don't think of a monkey.
It's warm & snug in the dwelling space once you're plugged in.
whir & click of a camera implant working the optic nerve
grasping at straws & rodlike substances
words like 'iceberg' 'bulbous' 'mimetic'
Hey babe, what's your make-up?
he presses an oscillogram into her glove
synchronized mitochondrial movement
plasma & remorse
It's what's inside that matters.
Jelly zygote spall
virtual fertilization
dethroning the real (right off the page)
(the application can still be found in the index)
an old lady kicking a pink plastic sack looks up
something akin to shame registers on her display screen
nanometric activity at the cellular level
"He was staring at me just like that. Then he wasn't smiling anymore and I thought, he knew. I think he was shocked."
she pulls the computer tighter round her
seamless biotic shell
atoms in their desperate dance
heterogeneous dilemma
It's difficult to breathe.
laborious
metallic hum on the tongue
tastes like art, like boredom
what remains
cathodic current buzzing through the tubes
difficult to
breathe
hatch
