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My Iris Review Collection

2019 - 2024

⟡ NumbersNumbers let us calculate
The time it would take
To reach the depths of outer space
To understand our microscopic scale
To compare our hearts
To the hearts of the universeOr measure the dose to save
A child’s life before the grave
And find the price of that sale
But not measure the worth
Of that child’s lifeNumbers
Are stifling desert air
Are breathtaking
And leave me parched
Gasping for meaning

⟡ The ProtagonistI love the way
Your sunny hair curls
And clouds with rain
And the scar tissue trace
Of your book spine breastplate
And you hold me
Like I am human,
TooI love the way
Your ocean eyes wave
Ancient rippled
Smile, dog-eared page
Wrinkled with use
And you tell me
I’m the one who
Reads

⟡ Red DovesConsider them
Raising red doves like battle flags
Before the blood is dryConsider them
Strapping stained wings to javelins
Before they reach for bandagesConsider them
Plagiarizing children’s deaths
In propaganda for the choirThey did not mean to shoot
Anything but a camera

⟡ Morning Teathe earl grey ghosts scream as they dissipate
thin wailing for the empty cabinets
I fear one day these lover ghosts will fade
and leave this old haunt uninhabitedI suffocate on steamy morning air
lost in the expanse of dawn’s vacancy
completely lacking friends with which to share
this sipping sandglass of eternityI fear the long halls winding through this life
are not haunted by promises of love
vain oaths writ by obsidian knife
erased without thought from aboveand I know one day you will be gone too
as I watch the void melt a sugar cube

⟡ prints
i have not cleaned the window in over a year
windex to glass, in any other room, would be so satisfying
but this one holds prints that will never be replaced
and i can’t bring myself to erase those memories
to let go again
of him, looking out into the trees and sunshine, nose pressed to the glass
it is a much better memory than my last
giving him chest compressions as his tongue lolls
dead from his mouth, handing him to a vet
thanking her for saving him, that is the last i said
not thank you for being my best boy, not i love you, not It’s Okay
selfish and holding on and pumping his breath In, i thanked her for
extending his suffering in the arms of a stranger instead of
resting with me
and i don’t want that to be my last memory,
so i can’t clean the window next to his ashes
because he always loved being there
looking out into the trees and sunshine

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Launderer

2020

Kieron pinches the butterfly’s golden wings, reading inky lettering between its circuit-like veins. I envy the secret language he shares with his father, wondering if my father might send me fluttering messages one day. Once the butterfly was decoded, Kieron lets a lonesome smile and smashes the creature. No evidence, only a dead messenger.“How’s he doing?” I query, chasing my government-sanctioned soup with a spoon. It is textureless and tasteless, but a perfectly balanced meal crafted by nutritionist AI.“It’s still garbage,” he sighs, “They probably upped his dose so he’s less lucid. I’m losing him every day,” he pulls his mask down, unlids his soup, and begins to drink.
Target acquired. I dismiss the monotone voice in my head.He is better groomed today, greasy hair combed and beard trimmed to a business-casual scruff. His sharp adam’s apple bobs and sinewy neck flexes. Tendons jut from the back of his hands. The Grounded life isn’t kind to him. “How’s your mom?”Mother recently quit taking her medicine because of the expense, and even my extra income can’t cover the cost. Every morning is a ritual of drawing on her missing eyebrows, teasing thin hair, and painting cocoa color onto pale lips. I know the way her dainty chain drapes deeper into her clavicles, her belts tighten beyond the punched holes, and her feet blister despite the lies she feeds me. “She’s making it. Eating more, since the last payment came through. Started baking again.”“Glad to hear,” he pulls his mask back up, ragged black cloth obscuring his face from crawlers. “Do you have a new order yet?”He had been wearing the same mask when we met in a similar concrete alley over a year ago. He was little more than a hairy mainframe then, his oversized hoodie draping like a duvet on a drying rack, but he had books and a feral stubbornness like I’d never seen and gave me a choice I’d never been offered. You don’t turn me in. I can teach you how to read.Back then everything was okay. I couldn’t read and I had a single-track mind: deliver laundry, make money, and sometimes, design new outfits to go to concerts and restaurants with Mother. I had my path down to a science. The monochrome urban shortcuts numbed my mind, but we catered to the upper-middle class of downtown Zurich. That was all the buzz I needed until Kieron knocked the wind out of me behind the Learning Center.•••“You can’t learn without a gen 5x interface or higher.”He thrust a book from his stack out to me. The cover screen shifted to reveal inky symbols. “Can you read?”“I said no.”“Yes, you can,” he shook the book, “They don’t want you to think you can. Look, you can see these letters, right?”“Yeah.”“This is G, E, O- are you keeping up?” he dropped his other books and jabbed one bony finger at the symbols on the cover.“No, I can’t read. My processor can’t do that.”“Look, G, have you seen this letter before?”I huffed and squinted. It looked familiar. I check my memory files, and there it is, everywhere.
Governor Jaoler. Friesenberg, my district. Elizabelle Wang, the name on my tag. The world suddenly started writing to me.•••“No,” I continue pushing around my soup, “no orders.”“Slow business then,” his dark, rust-colored eyes crease with his hidden smile. He tosses his cup into the nearby garbage disposal unit and leans against the jade green wall of the alley, watching the blue and white hue of sky pulse with projected clouds. “I can’t teach you anymore, you know? It’s just business now.”“I know,” my hands tremble, knowing far more than I’d like.“How does it feel to be able to read everything?”“Good. I tell Mother the stories I read. She thinks I have a good imagination,” I chuckle and intertwine my fingers to hold in the sweat. In truth, I tell mother stories because she can’t leave the house anymore, and I can’t tell her what I really do during the day. She’s too weak to travel, and to make matters worse, she’s running out of saving surgeries.Biomedical tech can do anything— make you prettier, heighten your senses, and reverse the age of your brain. People can only have life-saving surgeries a handful of times before the board of medicine considers it unethical. Rumor has it we could live forever, and that some of the members of the elite society have bought extra saving surgeries. I think bots can’t be bribed, but Kieron says it’s not the bots we should worry about, despite the lengths he goes to hide from them.Kieron’s laugh is choppy and dry, but genuine every time. “That’s good,” he takes a long breath and slaps his pockets. “I brought you something, from me and the Grounded.”“What? No, no, you shouldn’t have-” I wave frantically, trying to delete the scene before it unfolds.“You’ve helped us so much. You’ve been feeding and clothing an entire community on top of your day job. You put yourself at risk every day for us, and all I could do is teach you to read,”And give me part of the profits. I wring my hands, guilt building like static on my skin. Not reporting Kieron seemed bold a year ago, but I kept slipping further into his world. People without interfaces or IDs wander the streets. They have no access to Quarks, our integrated currency. According to the Zurich databases, these people don’t even exist— and when they are identified, some are simply given an interface and let go, but others are not so lucky. I felt bad for them, so I began selling their goods to Zurich citizens, then buying the Grounded food, clothes, whatever they needed. Then I started taking a cut.Kieron slips a thin bolt of fabric from the inner lining of his jacket. It’s a pale yellow Chantilly lace, full of flowers and butterflies twisting and blooming all through the cloth. It’s rough and bunched in spots, the work of human hands. I place my uneaten soup on the ground. The lace pattern is warm and smooth under my fingers, the texture I feel in specialty dresses for the elite.“Oh no, this is too much,” my throat swells, “I can’t help you anymore.”
His eyebrows knot, “Okay.”“You don’t get it. I’m not going to launder for you or the Grounded anymore. I quit, it’s too dangerous for me, Mother is sick, and I need more money—” the fear I’ve been ignoring coils in my jaw, the words springing from my tongue before they register to my brain.“Mom is sick?”Heat floods my eyes. “Aren’t you hearing me? I’m not working with you anymore, and I’ve made a huge mistake—”“Why didn’t you tell me your mom is sick?”The lace butterflies quiver in my hands. “I didn’t want you to worry, and there’s nothing you could do.”“Isn’t there medicine? What does she need, another surgery? A new stomach? We can find something for her.”“No, she’s not like us, she’s good. She’s fine with working herself to death just to have some decent shirts and some music and,” I stare up at those clouds gliding overhead, growing fluffier in my watery vision. The strip of neon blue sky blurs into the high jade walls. “The medicine is so fucking expensive, Kieron. We can’t afford it with laundry or laundering.”“We’ll figure it out. I know what it’s like.”“I already have.”The only breath in the alley is the soft, constant breeze generated by the biosphere. The air buzzes with the hum of distant drones. I press my palms into my eyes, trying to squeeze all my tears out at once, leaving inky blots on my white cuffs, and force myself to return Kieron’s cool stare.“What did you do?”I choke on government-sanctioned air. It smells like extinct grass clippings and honeysuckle, a scent designed to keep crowds happy and calm.“Don’t go home. There was a tracker in your soup. I’m so, so sorry,”His gaze drops to his palms, flexing and stretching his fingers. Dark, greasy hair falls over his face as he begins to retch. He pulls his mask down just in time for a long liquid stream to splatter the concrete. The stench is wretched.I stuff the lace in my waistband and pull my shirt over it as Kieron falls to his knees, slapping the vomit in search of the tracker. When he doesn’t find it, he shoves his hand in his throat, dry heaving in vain.The last time he was so frantic was the second time we met.•••The alley was dark and whispering when I arrived, and I wondered if it was a trap- if I’d walk in, and the man would be there again in a police uniform, or if he wouldn’t be there at all.He was pacing, heels thumping the cement as I approached, my book in hand, “I recognize all the numbers in this now.”He ruffled his hair with claw-like fingers, “Okay, do you know what the cover says?”“No, I still can’t read.”“It’s 1984, by George Orwell,” he stated deliberately, underlining the letters with one finger. “I don’t know why I’m wasting my time here…”“I can still call the police on you.”“For what? Giving you a book? If you think that’s bad, you carried it around all day. I have nothing on me.”“I have memories of you,” I tapped the scar on the side of my head where my interface was implanted.“Great, so you can get us both in trouble, that’s what you want?” He leaned over me, cracked lips splitting as he sneered down, “I shouldn’t have made a deal with you. I don’t have time to teach.”He began to walk away. “Stay here! You said you would teach me!”“Yeah, and I started. You can do the rest.”“No I can’t, I don’t know how!”He spun around, hands balled into gaunt maces, “Just do some research! You could have everything handed to you and feel like you have nothing. You think you’re so special, just like the rest of them, you don’t even see us. You don’t even try.”“You don’t even know me.”“I know enough,” he turned to keep on his way. I hurled 1984 and it ricocheted off the back of his head.“What the fuck do you want from me?” He gripped the back of his head and wheeled toward me, his breath invading my eyes and nose with something between vinegar and sugar.“I want you to give me answers! I was just delivering laundry, and then suddenly I have you begging me not to turn you in. What did you do? What do you want?”The creases around his eyes softened, but the muscle in his jaw continued to flex under the fiber of his mask, “Do you think I’m the only one without an interface?”I hadn’t considered it before. Everyone had an interface, it’s how we lived. “Well… Yeah.”“Don’t be surprised that you’re wrong. There are hundreds of us, and we’re not supposed to exist.”“Where?”He sighed, long and slow. “Some of us are given refuge by people with interfaces. Some of us live in abandoned buildings, or under bridges, or in alleys. I knew some that got arrested just so they’d get food.”“Why don’t you get interfaces?”“Because we’re not supposed to exist.”“Okay, okay… What if I bring food, and you keep teaching me to read?”“That sounds alright.”•••“I’m so sorry,” I stare at the smooth, grey ground, stepping backward slowly.“Why?”“I needed to. I needed the money.”“You sold me.”I nod and suck on my lips. The bounty for tracking a Grounded will pay for repairs on all our laundry machines and bots, Mother’s medicine for a year, and I can start a legal design studio. I’d started designing for the elite, using Grounded members as labor to fill the orders. I still have a backlog of orders, but I was afraid of getting caught working with the Grounded.Some are the grandchildren of the original engineers of Zurich— New Zurich is what they call it. Some are hackers, anarchists, or legacies of Amish families who lived here long before any of it was built. Some just support the cause that the government shouldn’t track us. Some even went so far as to fake their deaths and have their interfaces removed, severing their connection and giving up their universal income, government stipend food, housing, and clothing.The crackling hum of drone plasma propellers now permeates the alley. They are here.“Hope you like the lace of the people you just killed,” his lip curls and trembles. “I trusted you. It took me so long to trust you, and I finally did. I paid for that, for you, I thought you would like it because you were so interested in the butterflies.“Do you know why I have to kill butterflies to talk to my dad? Did that ever occur to you? He’s in a mental institution, and the courtyard is his only connection to the world. They say he’s crazy because my grandmom engineered this place! She might’ve even built your own house. She told him everything, and he taught me. Do you know we’re trapped here? That’s not the real sky? Do you know the sky is supposed to sparkle at night- stars?”“You are crazy…”“You’re just as bad as those bots! You’re programmed to work for them— work to death like your mom!”Area secured. Please vacate the area. Thank you for your assistance, citizen ElizabelleWang345. Quarks have been credited to your profile, and you have earned a loyalty badge! The same monotone voice announces in my head. Laser netting laces the sky above, and as I turn my back on Kieron I see it beginning to bar off the ends of the alley as well.“Send your mom my love, I hope she gets well soon,” he bellows behind me. The lasers pause to close behind me.•••The yellow butterfly lace stretches across Mother’s back and dances around her waist as she sets the table. It’s the most beautiful dress she’s ever worn or owned, she keeps telling me. Her eyebrows are thick and natural, her hair is bouncy and maroon, her cocoa lipstick is only a fashion choice. I know I’m responsible for the way dainty chains spill over her skin with no hollow bones to slip into.The last time I saw Kieron was last night in the same nightmare as always. Sleep is the price I pay for Mother’s health and our life of leisure. The initial payment made all my dreams come true, then for months, I received referral credits. I can only imagine why.We automated more of the laundry process to focus on our design studio, now catering to the Zurich elite. I even bought a gen 5x interface and certified reading software so clients can send me orders more easily.“What happened to your friend?” Mother queries, twirling basil parmesan pasta on a silver fork.“We had a falling out a while ago, haven’t heard from him since. I said some things I shouldn’t have,” I shrug and stuff my mouth. It tastes buttery, cheesy, guilty.“Oh, well I’m sure he’ll forgive you soon if you just apologize. I was looking forward to meeting him, it seemed like you two were getting along pretty well,” her night-dark eyes scan me for a response. “Remember how I would send you off with a dozen bread rolls? And you’d never come back with any. Young man had an appetite, huh?”“Enough for a whole district,” I offer a smile.Mother laughs.The grass-clipping and honeysuckle breeze wafts across our patio, sweeping away my appetite. Garden lights glitter in the peach hues of late day and veridian of artificially grown foliage. The community speaker begins to shift from ambient birdsong to the melody of crickets, occasionally marked by a real bird’s call or dog bark.I watch the lights and swirl the wine in my glass. It’s low alcohol content due to regulations, but the flavor is a simple luxury.As we finish dinner, a butterfly drifts through the patio. I’ve seen more of them recently, and I tell myself they’re just in season. It flaps almost mechanically, wings pivoting at the hinge as it flutters to land briefly on the rail nearby. Between the circuitry of its spread wings, I can read the message: 1984.

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Message Sent

The pigeon is flying as fast as it can! Let's hope no dragons eat it on the way.

• Cool!