The First Technology
by Brandon Amico
I dial into a conference line on mute to feel
loneliness pinball for a time. Each mouth rests
around opinion, a fruit, teeth testing its flesh.
So many people I can go to and be alone:
every conversation a cage or key in our tradition
of toggling, editing—freedom and its decay.
Easiest when I diversify my loneliness. Invest in the
mainstream and rivers counter-currenting. Industry flows
into military, limbs preface their use. Should I speak
and dare an act of contest, risk the opening
of a door to a nectar flood and handshake-sickness.
How can I attract, write down the past? With
honeybee blood, fruits and dyes smeared on a wall.
Brandon Amico is the author of Disappearing, Inc. (Gold Wake Press, 2019). He is the recipient of a Regional Artist Grant from the North Carolina Arts Council and the winner of Southern Humanities Review’s Hoepfner Literary Award for Poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Booth, The Cincinnati Review, Kenyon Review, New Ohio Review, and Verse Daily, among other publications.
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