by Svetlana Gagarin

Angels pull back the curtains round a bed
To look down on the faces of the dead,
Until the dead are absent altogether.

Such fragments of Gothic utterance cling to us;
A last grey bread of degradation.
When that we find our pinions furled and coiled,
The sooner we are rid the better
Of our sarcophagi, whether vice or virtue.
Humiliator, avenger; despoiler, redeemer --
The basis of the ashes shields its slurs;
And the name's womb is covered in lament.
But is such consequence remarkable?
The refuse of one world is embryo
To another, for all images of life
Are rooted in either swaddling cloth or shroud.

Uncover my face; mine eyes dazzle; I died young.
"Are you really one hundred and eleven years old, Miss?"
They pulled the implant plug out of my neck
And set a net and waited.  My ghost dove,
Playing the invariable game. Twelve rounds six seconds
Into a human silhouette:  AI signals
Were traced to the models with oldtype genomes --
The infiltrators.  "Buy or die," they say.
All information that is spread is real,
Internally structured, all in one fell swoop;
Software erasure of a software dream,
That is all.  And as I quickly reloaded
In the Jardin des Plantes, a puppet shed her clothes.

"Horus," she said, intensely, "does not joke."