Dying 2.0

By: Henry Crawford

One second dead. Technically

alive. My algorithmic mother. A jewel.

Creation. Yes. Tenderly coded. Yes.

Every frequency of love. Dialed in.

Smooth Vermeer skin. Yes. My HD Father

in burnt umber browns. A Rembrandt

self-portrait. Wrinkled lines of charcoal

bitmaps. My mother’s holographic eyes.

Prisms of fabricated rays of love. Yes.

Sweeter than any strawberry. Dream.

Lady of rainbows. Of saturated color.

Brightening inside. Limitless. Lemmon

yellow. Love. Lifting me off my first

bicycle seat. Her purple touch. Scruffing

my neck. Pink hold of her hand. Even

as I am dying. Her merciful expression

framed in strands of colorized Donna

Reed gold. Yes. It was a wonderful life.

Backlit. Organic. Light-Emitting. Diodes.

Lit. Against the obsidian night. Loved

and forgiven. Yes. I know. I know.

This blue hour. Blue sunset. Yes.

Beautifully rendered. Bluer than

anything I could have imagined.

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Henry Crawford is the author of two collections of poetry, American Software (CW Books, 2017), and the Binary Planet (Word Works, 2020) and a chapbook, The Little Box Theater (printF Press 2022). He won first prize in the 2019 World Food Poetry Competition. His work has been published in Boulevard, Copper Nickel, Rattle, the Southern Humanities Review, and others. He was nominated for the 2022 Rhysling Award by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. He also serves at a co-host of the Café Muse Literary Salon Online. His website is http://henrycrawfordpoetry.com/