If I Were Human

This poem originally appeared in Star*Line in 2022 and is a finalist for the Rhysling Award for best short poem! I thought it would be nice to put it here so you can all read it. 🙂 This is my fourth Rhysling nomination. The poem was rejected ten times before finding its home. My intent was to merge the playful punctuation of pseudocode with an exploration of what it means to live life in a meat suit.

If I were human my thoughts would be
Chimerical sparks / reaching meat,
Memory [abstraction] written in
Acetylcholine, easily leaked:
Insert you > my childhood:
Misattributed dialog.

If I were human, my eyes ==
Blurry fat pixels [fix in software] &
Shredded collagen flecks
Darting / floating
Squeeze protein to focus;

My [backward] knees would be
cartilage accretions [un-kink] –

My teeth of dentin with
crusty bits — I would
Decompose cellulose
> meat sack / midsection.

If I were human, a thousand
indignities & weaknesses would be
[me] but IF {
you would love me;
THAN I would love me;
}

Every pimple and burp.