Christopher Robley

N

Nano

In an air-conditioned trailer, three geeks
barely beyond boyhood fist-bump and high-five

at a job well done. With the click of a key a dozen
soundless screens flutter. Now in the shallow

of a cave near the Khyber Pass, a stack of glow sticks
activated in the blast steeps the darkness green:

two cans of pineapple; a mangled can of beets
bleeding juice; some boy streaked black, his burns

wrapped in torn canvas tent ­ flaps. He must hear the
cyborg beetle’ s brains buzz like a circuit- ­ bent keyboard