Late Empire. Lisa Olstein

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      IT ALL LIGHTS UP

      It’s hard to feel spry in any room

      they’ve pushed you in or out of

      as if the walls remember the wheels,

      their muted whine, and your own

      whimpering cries as rosy-fingered dawn

      licked you clean with her rough tongue.

      We’re all going to die, you’ve heard

      a thousand times from your own

      mother’s mouth. You never believed her,

      how could you, she invented life,

      but then one day stuck in traffic

      you catch yourself muttering the line

      and it sticks and every stupid argument

      comes back to you stupider still

      and your petty feelings about the special

      Employee of the Month parking space

      and all those nights you settled

      for takeout and a blindfold. Here

      at the university, the corridors are

      labeled Corridor. The visualization

      laboratory is dark. Inside, scanning for

      shark-shaped shadows, the surfer knows

      to borrow the seal’s suit is to borrow

      its nightmares, too. Maybe today

      species are outdated modes of technology,

      and this is why we give them up

      so easily. Sometimes there’s a glitch

      in the system. Fatal errors occur.