MORGAN PARKER: RoboBeyoncé

from The Decision To Karaoke by 90s Meg Ryan

	/

lyrics

–– RoboBeyoncé ––

Charging in the darkroom
while you sleep I am touch and go
I flicker and get turned on
Precisely the future
Exterior shell, interior disco
I like my liver steeled
as a gun, my wires
unbuttoned to you
The reason I was built
is to outlast some terribly
feminine sickness
that is delivered
to the blood through kale
salad and pity and men
with straight-haired girlfriends
The future’s a skirt of
expectation to mourn
This way, hard-cased
you can put your eyes on me
It’s less about obedience than
silvery lipstick stains
It’s mostly about machine tits
Artificially I’m interested
Virtually I’m drunk
The future’s a girlish helmet
with circuits that need doctors
In the future our bodies can’t
I dare you
Tell me apart from other girls
Nothing aches in here
You can never touch me actually
It’s a quiet, calculated shame

.
.
.
–~–~–~–~–~–~–~–~–~–~–~–~–~–~–~–~–
MORGAN PARKER's first book, Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, was selected by Eileen Myles for The 2013 Gatewood Prize and is forthcoming from Switchback Books. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Tin House, jubilat, and Forklift, Ohio. A Cave Canem fellow, graduate of NYU’s Creative Writing MFA program, and poetry editor for Coconut Magazine, Morgan lives in Brooklyn.

More: www.morgan-parker.com.