Salome Agbaroji

Biased science elevated one people over the last.

But with differentiation came racism and caste, littering our world with non-compostable isms.

I say to its text and images, you're brilliant, but you aren't the first generation to forge something out of seemingly nothing.

Haven't you seen my generation, the DIYers and binary defiers?

We too extract wisdom from the earth's mouth.

Like a flower or a landmine.

Sure, drive our cars, but never our movements.

Never our blood and boned passions.

Yes, for sure.

I feel like as a poet, every line hopefully delivers a punch or at least sets one up.

And in the writing process, you know when you've hit one, when it hits you.

You're like, dang, I really ate when I wrote that.

Hold on.

Go back.

Let me not delete that.

And one of the lines that gave me that feeling when writing was, You can't replace the place of the people I say to the people.

The displaced children without homes do not cry mechanical tears about a simulated hunger induced by virtual war.

When I wrote that one, I really felt like I was able to encompass what I wanted the poem to be in essence of the juxtaposition of like the human experience with the mechanical world that we are so fascinated by.

But, you know, we live in the natural.

We accessorize the natural with these gadgets and these things.