robot sappho
dances in metropolis [all] male desire is mechanical
I am watching replicate[d] goddess in a thousand forms
[we] open to say we open, together darling [ ] open [figure]
across the city made only of light pinned to glass chins held up & suckling
take arms, take thigh & make a thousand assemblyline sweetheart
[ ] [we] desire to paleolithic[?] I cast out for your shore
one with hair pinned to the sky forms [of correct address?]
I wanted to assert …
robot maria
goes from the cardboard city ; goes from the men who would taste her accessories
; goes from the men whose teeth & sharps would enter her ; goes from under the
overripe blister lights ; goes from the busted machine depot ; jellybreath three
words unspooling from his blonde lips ; the pavement gleaming its lit way ; goes
from the hungry rows of facsimile faces ; all equal in abattoir to split her
manufactured organ ; goes from the city into hills of nippled chimneys ; goes over
the tracks of salt ; goes with late summer’s dandelion bloom on her hard joints ;
goes through a gate open to a field ; goes to a higher point where the air is lonely ;
she watches out to the closed window of cloud ; she goes inside her library to
ascertain ; there is one giant sun ; the men spool gaze ; a replacement will be
provided ; a replacement will be incarnate ; an image of the first maria ; her white
shift ; & the way a sudden understanding unfolded in her just as the wings
unfurled above
& dropped
robot clodia
oh tender sea diamonded I smell sweat, [ ] bonded
acacias shrine to isis collection of air instruments
still [ ]stretched as my belly does now over rocks
ritual morning you woke the sea I rolled against your ash edge
“pass me time, I will not return it to you” spooling internal
repeat,repeat, exchange as the white boats do across salt
pass time I’m greedy for the human[scale] [ ], taken
[time] burns
[ ] tender figure what springs to meet you my boiled shadow
Petra Kamula is an Australian-British poet, essayist, and editor. Her work is interested in alternate/subversive myth, histories, and geographies. Her work has appeared in Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Magma, Under the Radar and others. You can follow her at @petrakamula.
