Jalina Mhyana

needs convalescing and care,
but there is no intercourse between us - it is dumb,
a date dragged into the light and seen for what she is.
I sit like Oz behind this digitized curtain
but can’t give it a brain.

I imagine its intelligence creeping from the desk
for attention, a spider crawling toward us
on its world wide web -
a 2-dimensional mindscape solidifying
in once-thoughtless objects that now buzz
with thought all around me

So I read Li-Young Lee to pass the time,
click his photograph on the stained back cover,
out of habit,
as if my body could arrive at his website,
the cushion beneath my head translating
my thoughts to 0’s and 1’s,
and forwarding them as attachments

In the too-bright bathroom
I wait for a toolbar to descend from the ceiling
so I can change the light’s color
from white to peach with a click of the soap bar

I want to highlight mounds of clutter
& hit delete, superimpose a square over our large window
& click it yellow for sunlight.

I could line up my emails on the couch &
revise them, file them, or forward their awful jokes.
I could grind my pelvis
into their viruses and break down,
little by little,
suddenly blue with error
and in need of a hasty turn-off

Jalina Mhyana is co-editor of Rock Salt Plum Poetry Review. Her chapbook Spikeseed is forthcoming from Bad Moon Books in January. Jalina's poetry has been published, or will be published, in Room of One's own, Japanophile Press, Slow Trains, Erosha, Eclectica, Moxie Magazine, Peshekee River Poetry, Verse Libre Quarterly, Spitjaw Review, Salt River Review, Branches Quarterly, among others. She has lived in northern Japan for the past six years, where she has owned and operated an American massage therapy college and massage practice. Jalina can be contacted at editors@rocksaltplum.com