A 30 million page backup disc of humanity’s collected knowledge is going
to the moon,
a safe deposit box, a treasure chest
data files compressed into 21 thin layers.
it contains all of our knowledge
that is housed on Wikipedia.
Listen, I love a library, but
I love this world in analogue.
Give me pages and their faults,
pyrophoric, moldering.
Is it stored in binary or in html, a call number for the time
I plunged my arms into the depths of an indigo vat
lizard brain response to the moment a thing you care for falls away,
exposed to air & anaerobic, my fingers tinctured first
the color of a California hillside
distending into summer then
the color of Mineral Lake into which I hurdled
evenings after dinner sublimating to the deepest blue;
to which article do I append
the eulogy delivered at the funeral of a woman who lived
allergy-eyed on a riding lawnmower,
full speed;
when they arrive
what they will find
is beauty,
holographic diffracted glow,
one DVD.
Jill Bergantz Carley is a multiple Pushcart-nominated poet and artist living in Northern California. Her first collection, ANIMAL VEGETABLE MINERAL, is forthcoming from UnCollected Press in 2020.
