Panopticon
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Panopticon
After the breakup Johnsaw secret police on the lawn.(They were expert at being gonethe moment I came around.)
They had ears and eyes in his phone,'til he smashed it. Their camouflaged dronetormented him alone—a chronic needle of sound.
When he whined like some hotsy-totsystar whose paparazziwere Russian, Trumpist, or Nazi(depending on the day),
I would ask him why a regimewould ever want to streamhis breakfast. He would scream,"That's just what they want you to say!"
To thwart their intelligencehe erected, at crazy expense,a 10-foot tinfoil fenceand covered his yard with a tent.
No use. Their satelliteupgraded to thermal sight,and they planted, late one night,a sensor like a stent [End Page 55]
in his brain's deep state, some roomwhere the ur-urges bloomand cogito, ergo sumwells up thick and fast.
What can we do when the buggoes deeper than any drug?John dug and he dug and he dugand broke loose life at last. [End Page 56]
AARON POOCHIGIAN earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. His third book, American Divine, won the Richard Wilbur Award and will come out in 2021. His work has appeared in such publications as Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, and POETRY.
