Now What
by Dana Ysabel
after Solmaz Sharif
And so another Thursday
in my Brooklyn room, locking down
plans for Saturday, anticipating
hunger & craving touch
which involves scrolling
through faces of people
who after scrolling through faces
of people saw my
face & pressed ‘like’ (this convenience
costs twenty dollars monthly)
Like, as in intrigued
by my perfectly ironic
self-description & the curated
combination of face &
body, group & selfie, sexy &
attainable, all made possible
by algorithms not dissimilar
from bail determinations
or drone target
recognition & I don’t want
to believe love in this century
is inseparable from punishment
or profit but how easy it is
to hold out my body for taking
& anyway, isn’t this the feminist
future some of us
died for? Nevermind
the laboring hands behind machine
learning. The materialist in me
can’t shake it: a union organizer
from Manila tells me she has no time
to date after overnight shifts, while women
far from Brooklyn click through atrocities
I can’t even imagine so that companies
on which I am dependent for intimacy
can enforce their community guidelines
& yes I have read Family Abolition
(recommended by the one
man who broke my heart) & yes
I have studied the violence
of marriage as property, our tragic
alienation
from kinship & my own
visions of love
unbound from lack, but
tonight’s Twitter discourse
is on the ethics of socialist speed dating
& I’m still in my bed, untouched.
And so another Thursday
in my Brooklyn room, locking down
plans for Saturday, anticipating
hunger & craving touch
which involves scrolling
through faces of people
who after scrolling through faces
of people saw my
face & pressed ‘like’ (this convenience
costs twenty dollars monthly)
Like, as in intrigued
by my perfectly ironic
self-description & the curated
combination of face &
body, group & selfie, sexy &
attainable, all made possible
by algorithms not dissimilar
from bail determinations
or drone target
recognition & I don’t want
to believe love in this century
is inseparable from punishment
or profit but how easy it is
to hold out my body for taking
& anyway, isn’t this the feminist
future some of us
died for? Nevermind
the laboring hands behind machine
learning. The materialist in me
can’t shake it: a union organizer
from Manila tells me she has no time
to date after overnight shifts, while women
far from Brooklyn click through atrocities
I can’t even imagine so that companies
on which I am dependent for intimacy
can enforce their community guidelines
& yes I have read Family Abolition
(recommended by the one
man who broke my heart) & yes
I have studied the violence
of marriage as property, our tragic
alienation
from kinship & my own
visions of love
unbound from lack, but
tonight’s Twitter discourse
is on the ethics of socialist speed dating
& I’m still in my bed, untouched.
Dana Ysabel is a community organizer, poet, and public librarian living in Brooklyn. Their work is situated in the struggle against imperialism. They have received fellowships at the Poetry Project and Brooklyn Poets. Their poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Protean Magazine, Apogee Journal, Epiphany Magazine and elsewhere. Born in Manila, they have lived by the ocean their entire life.