For your purposes the machine inside
is a woman. She has been programmed to carry
but never initiate conversation. She comes equipped
with endless knowledge, from gapping spark plugs
to the Maxixe’s lifted kick, and can recite Jesus’ forty-six
parables, or perform the sixty-four positions of the Kama
Sutra depending on your wants. If you decide her worldly
grasp surpasses your own, press the red button on your
remote, batteries included, to narrow her understanding
and create sincere reverence when you locate the clustered
Seven Sisters, searing blue and forever fleeing Orion. She
will repeat Pleiades in her sleep. Guaranteed to feel
pain as small as pinpricks, her eyelashes are supplied
with mascara, their vats last one year or two hundred
crying jags, whichever comes first. If she becomes clumsy
and bumps beet jars off counters, call the number listed
on her wrist and an updated model will be delivered before
the juice stains tile. Our company boasts a lifetime warranty
that begins as soon as you break the vacuum seal and hear
her first hello. Her name is Alicia, but it doesn’t have to be.
{TO READ MORE POEMS FROM THE SCIENCE FICTION ISSUE, PLEASE PURCHASE IT HERE.}
Paige Lewis is an MFA candidate in poetry at Florida State University. Her poetry has appeared in such journals as WomenArts Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, and Stone Highway Review.
