we’re in the backseat
of your car
and i’m thinking about
how oracle,
facebook, amazon,
google,
are mining us for data,
factory reset,
only the fbi,
data collectors,
my mother,
god, and
the irs
know me by my old name,
for a moment, you call me
by the wrong name
and i wonder if there
is anything in my data,
that makes me
so unlovable.
(I’m thinking of NASA pinging the Mars Rover a thousand times in 8 months. For a moment, there is nothing but rain. After a massive dust storm knocked the Mars Rover offline, NASA spent days pinging the Mars Rover. The Mars Rover’s last transmission has been interpreted over and over again. The Mars Rover going cold. The Mars Rover: “My battery is getting low. It is getting dark.” One last ping before going offline. Please, just one last song.)
*1
we’re in the kitchen now
a failed food experiment,
we’re eating it anyway,
we laugh at all the other possibilities
that our food experiment could have
failed, we settle on being thankful,
for no house fire,
in every universe,
i am a little bit lonely.
(The initial successful rover sent to Mars, dubbed Mars Pathfinder, also dubbed Sojourner, landed successfully on Mars in July of 1997. Approximately, two months later Mars Pathfinder lost all communication. Following the Mars Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rover, also dubbed Spirit, landed on Mars in January of 2004, nearly six months after it was launched. After six years, its wheels became trapped in sand. NASA ceased rescue operations a year after. The Mars Rover Exploration, also dubbed Opportunity, landed in January of 2004, surpassing all previous records of lasting and longevity. It spent 15 Earth years on Mars, roaming its surface, before sending its last ping in June of 2018. NASA declared the mission complete a year later.)
*2
our mothers were similar,
vietnamese and schizophrenic,
to outlive a war,
something here must survive,
there is a universe, where we don’t meet,
and we never talk about our mothers,
my mother moved to the U.S.
in the late 90s,
i remember her saying it
was lonely,
my mother says the sound
of a commercial airplane
sounds ghê sợ3 like,
a final ping4,
your mom is afraid of
the satellites, so much so
she became one,
during her episode
she said she controlled the
satellites outside of your
childhood home.
(I’m thinking of NASA pinging the Mars Rover a thousand times in 8 months.)
*5
in the u.s., america everything
is an ad even death.
when my father died
after his cancer
came back,
my mother said it
was in our water,
back in việt nam
it was everywhere in
the soil, the food,
the left-over
bomb shell casings
lighting up my dad’s
cancer screenings,
by the time his cancer came back
his body had traces of it
everywhere.
my fbi agent knows
i spent 8 months
researching the words
agent orange6 and
stomach cancer. i get
shown an ad for
a cancer preventative
vitamin on tik tok.
i wonder what traces of it
are in my data,
how much of it was
passed down from my
father and mother, to my
brother and i.
i wonder if my fbi agent
knows i’m lonely.
tik tok shows me an ad
for an app that can help
me know myself
my data shows that
i don’t know myself,
tik tok shows me an ad
for finding god,
i guess there’s a god then.
(I’m thinking of NASA pinging the Mars Rover a thousand times in 8 months.)
in the u.s., america everything
is an ad even death.
1 Every * is a universe.
2 The universe is lonely.
3 (noun) Terrifying, scary, terrible, frightful, dreadful.
4 Bomb
5 I’m thinking of every * as a small creature. Maybe, a hermit crab or a mourning gecko or god.
6 It.