Real Tree
Everywhere I take my phone, it is designed for—
I am walking through the forest now with a phone
made to take to the forest
it measures my steps in dandelion stem-lengths,
stores magnificent data beneath the heart
I lose my phone call among the real trees,
I call and call, no one answers—
The forest is designed for the phone, able
to detect variety names
of mosses when
I hold my phone up close toward a tuft it
tells me: the tips of the mosses are auditory
cilia—listening to your consumable keywords—
the rest of the moss
is moss
Immune Support Hotline
They’ve since discovered all things—
even the blue light—are composed of
three things: camera / phone / calculator—
and so we call them: things
we’ve co-evolved with— medicine,
tools:
the wild plantain can clot
the buzzing of the nettle, sting that
emanates from
heart / airplane-mode / dream
What we call plane-tain leaf is known
to clot the buzzing of a mesmerizing
media player visualization, sambucus
berries known to
even clot off virus in lambs—
The dying man on the phone
asks me, would you call that evolved?
Ian U Lockaby is a poet, translator, and former farmworker. His poems and translations can be found in Sixth Finch, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Prelude, Anomaly, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. He is the translator of Gardens, by Chilean poet Carlos Cociña, published by Cardboard House Press in 2021, and his chapbook A Seam of Electricity is forthcoming from Ghost Proposal. He edits the journal mercury firs, and lives in New Orleans.