Out of time


You can’t ask a replica of a replica
to get in the wrongness, to rise up.
I’ve stuck my head in the algorithm
unable to find an exit.
Look, I’m in the network until it rights itself,
I have body armour and a weapon.
The day is warming
: plume             baton             tear gas.
Ahead of me a bot runs through coin slots
of wrecked light, senseless with fright.

 

 

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Angela Gardner

Angela Gardner is a Welsh Australian writer and visual artist. “Slippage”, her manuscript-in-progress, was shortlisted for the Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award 2023. Her verse novel The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette, was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year, 2022 and a UK National Poetry Day recommendation.

More by Angela Gardner ›

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