Take a Cookie
Imagine how much energy is disturbed in the Oracle’s outer room, how every time a child shaman bends a teaspoon in knots or levitates toy blocks for practice, a tremor makes its path down strings of code all the way to the Central Processor, how that vibration must aggravate the logic of the Matrix like sound waves against the snout of a bull shark. And all the while, cookies bake in the oven and the Oracle holds smoke in her lungs like it’s breeze from heaven. How those walls must humthrough all the binary’s black. How stunning the code must be for the smell of warm cinnamon and oats.
Not Like This
Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literatureand directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in HAD, Rejection Letters, Pidgeonholes, The Shore, Cotton Xenomorph, Okay Donkey, EcoTheo, and other journals. His most recent collection is Color All Maps New (Mercer University Press, 2021). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.