FreezeRay:  Poetry With A Pop
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Vincent Toro

 Algorithmiac

                                               Style used to be an interaction between the human soul
                                                     and tools that were limiting. In the digital era, it will have
                                                     to come from the soul alone.              -Jaron Lanier

 

An app to call your mother for you on
                  her birthday. An app to turn traffic
​                             into a tulip garden.  An app
for when your favorite sweater
                          is ready at the cleaner.
              An app that draws blood
moons onto the walls
              at the post office.
              An app that predicts when
                             a pineapple will ripen.
An app that shares
                         your wittiest anecdotes
with the nearest hogs. An app to kneel
                 for your when your sister’s
melanoma is malignant. An app
                                to agree with you when
the audience has fallen asleep. An app
             for when your birthday bludgeons
                             you with dour questions.
An app to celebrate each time another
dishwasher gets fixed. An app that begs.
                 An app that listens even when
                 you are entirely incoherent.
                                An app to sell off your old
                                magazines and an app that
refashions dentures into colonnades
                  whenever the blows you struck
crawl through your intestines
                       clogging your best intentions.
An app that rots or riots
                             on command. An app that
              functions without a thumb
to guide it. An app to eliminate undesirable
                           scents. An app that shakes
the sand from your bathing suit
                 while checking your father’s
cholesterol. An app that goes home
                            with the wrong guy
                for you, so that you can
go home with the right one.


Vincent Toro is the author or STEREO.ISLAND.MOSAIC., which was awarded the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award and the Sawtooth Poetry Prize. He is recipient of a Poet’s House Emerging Poets Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, The Caribbean Writer’s Cecile De Jongh Poetry Prize, and the Metlife Nuestras Voces Playwriting Award. Vincent teaches English at Bronx Community College, is poet in the schools for Dreamyard and the Dodge Poetry Foundation, is writing liaison for Cooper Union’s Saturday Program, and is a contributing editor at Kweli Literary Journal.
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