Screening D(!)rt

Jessica Ahrens

RBG crystals beaded on polyethylene terephthalate,

plastering a vessel of memories, for

a machine I am not, but

fraught withering serrated

hands, once thought of as blades,

divided by a need not to catch sail.

The sea does not beckon, witnessing the

bracken that fills in fault lines from what it

recognizes the same as its concealed scars,

somewhere that it, too

wonders when the last time it had

pondered on.

When the wasps were once kind,

before the figs turned inflorescences,

flouncing like porcelain honeysuckle,

tempting sweetness only for

winged candles that have not known

the burn of the cage.

Bars, long since melted in the

swelter of nourished land’s sole star,

lost purpose for transactional exchange

smiled by #0827F5.

I am an artist pulled with string tension and electronic repulsion to the brink of instability, though I argue that's where invention begins. All reactions start with a collision, whether artificially simulated or biological, including as you read this right now! Words are my favorite medium. I experiment, distill, boil, broil, and toil even when I am not in the lab.