Clara B. Jones


/bots/

A.*
1.
Sharing personal data is the price of freedom.
2.
Press the red key to delete everything, and your life will be vastly improved.
3.
Negrobots will come to a town near you if Section 8 survives at all.
4.
The future of shopping is largely online since math will end poverty.
5.
Emoticons are the essence of botness.
6.
You can live like Bill Gates in virtual reality while blockchain keeps your platform safe.
7.
Voluntary segregation drives identity politics.
8.
Bots are storming the streets, but revolution is old news.
9.
Does talking to a machine make you think like a machine?
10.
Lose yourself in data.
11.
Trump seeks a high-tech solution for crime waves.
12.
Cooking classes combat loneliness.
13.
All bots are sexual objects.
14.
Microchips are simple; redundancy, complex.

     *Partially found in WIRED Magazine, June 2018



B.
Roche Bobois® sells high-end l'art de vivre,
but who's to say what taste is in Munich or
Thebes since bots are taking over the
suburbs of Newark as service devices built to
please women using good looks to succeed at
home and in other safe spaces housing Steuben®
glass and succulents? Melania drew portraits of
victims standing in meadows holding canary
entrails (blood [red], feathers [yellow], bile [cerulean])
to their throats, rubbing the guts with fingers
kneading in rhythm to leaves fluttering and green

(an Enterolobium tall as a cyclops in Hades [hot]
or Sparta [bellicose]). You went to Art Basel,
didn't you? Miami will only get hotter, and the
Arctic is melting so she is studying bots' responses
to unknowns [global warming], though severe
stress is chronic yet idiopathic. Before sitting at
the bar in a Sheraton® in Queens, Melania went to
Hanley's to see Sean's sculptures reminding her
of the Hudson Valley where goats graze in unison
[chomp, breathe, chomp, lick, breathe], performing
goatness written in genes—different than the

code in a bot's processor built to last longer
than a meal of veal francese and liebfraumilch.
If I recall correctly, you moved into her farmhouse,
sleeping on a palette in the attic. You were
happy before your cat was killed by the server
about to plate sardines and feta on rye lying next
to jars of Dijón and pears waiting to be served
at her tea party in the barn where goats were
milked, cheese churned, leeks fermented—
table set for nine, a quartet playing Vivaldi
softly, like Melania whispering to you—Time for this to end.




Clara B. Jones is a Knowledge Worker practicing in Silver Spring, MD, USA. Her publications can be found in a variety of venues, and she is author of the weblog chapbook, Paradigms: Poems.
 
 
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