Insects are small, they already know how to fly, and — best of all — they power themselves.
— Emily Anthes
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
above his Pashto prayers. But we know enough to
leave the live feed low, audio is for the analysts.
Our weapon : witnessing — : wired that way.
Somewhere in Texas or California or Kentucky
Taco Bell is on the table where too the kill list rests
quietly satisfied, and so its discord folds inward
like an origami acorn nestled sharply in the heart.