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Not a robot, suggests poet Lisa Allen Ortiz. Prove it and she deftly does.
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I am not a Robot
By Lisa Allen Ortiz
What language do
machines speak?
Yes. No. I woke to
a progress bar—
some lapse or absence.
Who made the world?
We did, you said, and
I worked the problem of it
with my hands.
Inside the puzzle
of it, a captcha code
the prophets left, a wheel
rimmed with eyes.
Crosswalks, stoplights.
I checked everything
I knew. The human part
dragged itself.
Something clicked.
Baby, I like the way
you look at me.
What a time on earth —
sunlight, shadow
and both of us inside
this one
encrypted afternoon.
Lisa Allen Ortiz’s second collection of poetry, Stem, won the 2022 Idaho Prize judged by Ilya Kaminsky. She lives in Santa Cruz, CA
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