M. Shelley’s Interrogation

By Annette Sisson

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            For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires.
                        Monster, Frankenstein


If computers expunge humanity,
would their pulsing motherboards

replicate human flaws?
Drones with nervous tics

scratching themselves in public,
or cluttered microchips multiplying

data, hoarding fragments
of cursive. Perhaps some

would dab watercolor light
onto rough press paper,

glide a bow, suffer
the trembling strings to mourn.

Would the warbler’s chipped
trill, the moon-white orchid,

stir their sensors, the Luna’s
lobed wing brush

mystery into code? And if
they chose a god to humble

them, prayed to their creators’
human ashes, would we

kindle ourselves, put on
the Godhead, breathe in translucence—

claim this progeny our own?

Annette Sisson’s poems are published in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, Citron Review, Lascaux Review, Cider Press Review, Glassworks, Aeolian Harp Anthology (2023), and others. Her first book, Small Fish in High Branches, was published by Glass Lyre (May 2022), and she is finishing her second, Winter Sharp with Apples. Her poems have placed in Frontier New Voices, The Fish Anthology, and others; several have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

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