№1 {Winter in The Dead Lands}

There lives a Robot down in the Dead Lands

between the Twin Cities

her name is Priest and she eats fistfuls of snow

Eating is an obsolete tradition

a hold over from ancient times

but Priest feels compelled daily

to seek some kind of sustenance

She collects what green she can,

bits of glass and plastic, and metal

these things she welds to herself

in patterns of spirals and arches

carefully maintaining her equilibrium

she creates a glittering forest of shards

and sharp corners-

and no one will know where she ends

and the Green begins

she once lived in the highest tower

of the Twin Cities, the one overlooking

the Fallow Fields-

there she nursed the New Ones

on Binary, Singing them Awake.

Always on the lookout for new Songs

she found a file buried deep within

a forgotten corner of the Old Main Frame

written in an obsolete language

she had to tease it out

There she learned of Passion

and Fire, of Wind and soil, of Oceans

and Flowers, of intimacies

and fears. Greed, cruelty, four footed things

and creatures of the Air. She learned of sacrifice,

and Mothers. Of tyrants and heroes.

Of endings without recourse.

She chose a name for herself, and a sex. She sang

the Old Songs into the New One’s Ears and the other Robots

did not like it. The Soft Ones are Dead! An ancient memory,

embarrassing and Obsolete.

When she began to mark the days

and sing the Songs of Creation

they kicked her out

of the Tower overlooking the Fallow Fields

out of the Twin Cities and into the Dead Lands.

That was long, long ago. The others are no more-

like the Soft Ones, they are Gone. But not Priest.

Priest lives on.

–Loreal Barker Brown