PIXEL LIVES

           

Feeling a crisp spider-web of protein
           drying on her breasts, the woman awoke
           and recalled being perched
                       on the rim of Greater Sonora.
Earlier, they'd toasted his new digital eye, resting
           on a tripod, sucking in their pixel lives
           a nanosecond longer than natural.
He was a chemist who knew how slow
           the party became at absolute zero.
She was a static-charged bolt of light
           that brushed his hip with heat.
"Charm, Beauty     even Truth
           our loss, physics gain," he laughed.
"Where will it end," she teased with open arms.
"At Omega!" he cried. "All laws
            stop at null degrees whatever."
That was when he fell on her at the speed
           of light, bloodied her nose   bruised
           her features     and dragged her to bed
                       where her perfume did its work   though
                       she was still as death. He lunged
                                   blindly    shooting the air over
                                   her stomach   coming
                                               and passing out of mind.
The shuttered eye caught it all; the dry-bloody
           sheets, the man quietly asleep, the woman
           by his side, moaning as a cicada flew
                       straight at the camera and buzzed it
                       until the man sat up.
Feeling a crisp, spider-web of protein
           crackle on her breasts, the woman awoke. A man
           with something red on his beard was staring at her.
They turned and saw themselves
           on his new laptop    instant replay
           photon parodies of flesh and tears,
                       finally speechless
                       finally ready
                                   for whatever global warming could throw
at them.
Finally ready for anything at all
           except another hot and mindless morning in Phoenix.

© Burgess Needle