After the episode, “Be Right Back” from Black Mirror
My order has been placed—payment received,
confirmed, processed. It is shrink-wrapped and
shipped, in transit. It is positioned down on its
back. It is synthetic, software—it is obscene.
I cling to its radius, I am the administrator. Crater
of moon beyond those nodes and lateral spindle
branches. Sprig of hemlock on the mantel, saved.
To activate, I paste it—my greasy carbuncle—into
a bath of electrolytes, bleeping. It leaps, if I summon
it, from cliff-sides and crack willows, from my evening
body disrobed, in perfect grief, waning like
a widget dipped in serum, not to be returned.
Emily Corwin is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Indiana University-Bloomington and the former Poetry Editor for Indiana Review. Her writing has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Ninth Letter, Gigantic Sequins, New South, Yemassee, THRUSH, and elsewhere. She has two chapbooks, My Tall Handsome (Brain Mill Press) and darkling (Platypus Press) which were published in 2016. Her first full-length collection, tenderling was released from Stalking Horse Press in 2018 and she was a finalist for the 2018 Pleiades Press Editors Prize. Her manuscript, sensorium was chosen as an Editor’s Choice selection for the 2018 Akron Poetry Prize and is forthcoming with the University of Akron Press.