Alyssa Moore

1 The resistance dissolved: 2 salt in the wound was found suitable 3 to augment

the rations; 4 sleeping dogs, presumably dead, bloated the black markets. 5 It was

a confusing time. 6 The machine constantly rearranged 7 the files: no one knew 8 who

owned their lungs or 9 to whom they’d pledged 10 their children. 11 Even the

wrenchmen—the once-compilers 12 of the abuses, 13 the once-builders 14 of the

catalytic Arc— 15 started missing the touch, 16 the directive fingers 17 of the machine

18 lapping 19 at their wrists, 20 always present 21 to refasten a flailing barcode

or 22 implant new gears. 23 This was when the people 23 backslid, 25 forgot

6 it’d been the machine 26 who scooped up 27 their only brother, appropriating him,

28 save that one 29 good rib 30 which was nailed 31 to the doorpost

Should it still be so
razor-edged & wondrous to see the sacrificial hordes of little men who tarp the sky carve 
vertical welts through the atmosphere, climbing up each gangly axon of ladder, moving—from
what I can see at my post—so diligently at first and then slowing, almost to a stall, seeming 
to dangle in the air, the near-shorn coat of an overgrown sheep swung just below the belly, 
attached by a few strong deluded fibers, or caught in the tropopause, perhaps on a 
malfunctioning glass elevator, gears flooded—