An altered smartphone photograph of the inside of a house in Animal Crossing: Population Growing for the Nintendo Gamecube. The walls are wooden, the floors are metallic. A striped yellow couch with claw feet faces a window on the right side of the room. A boom box sits in the far right corner. Analog alarm clocks corrupted in static litter the floor and cast impossible shadows. A lone female villager with pink hair sits on the couch. We see only her profile, she is staring out the window as a bright light shines in. She is wearing a matching dress and conical hat, primarily red with festive patterns of blue, white, and green. The entire scene is textured like cracked sand. The colors saturate and contrast. There is a cut-up poem created with pictures of in-game text on the left half of the photograph. It reads: I can’t imagine / I’m not a girl! / It’s normal / a desperate need / It’s just animal nature! / Wretched / …the guys / try changing it around. / think that maybe / such a thing / A creature / is / full-bodied / Smooth.
Alannah Guevara is a poet-wife and vilomah. Find her published works by floating around in the aether (or in Revolution John, Isele Magazine, Toyon, and Rejection Letters). Alannah is the editor-in-chief of Hunter’s Affects: a lit mag for deadheads. Alannah is on Twitter @prismospickle.