in their mind
to catalog greater and greater amounts
of data to become like
supercomputers
but what if instead
they just created one place:
the lake district—
rolling hills dotted with sheep
and wet cows
crisscrossed with stone walls
mealy slabs of road
tiny paved lines
leading to lovely towns
that love themselves
and it takes infinite ink
to write of every pixel,
every spare blade of grass
just so
every inch is data
recreating the feeling
of free-falling on a bicycle
toward the possibility
of [even greater quantities of]
rain—
there will be no competing
with computers
only a mind can become
Joey Lew holds an MFA from UNC-Greensboro and is currently a medical student at UCSF. Her interviews and reviews have been published in Diode, Michigan Quarterly Review Online, and Tupelo Quarterly. Her poetry can be seen in Gravel and in Black Bough Poetry, and is forthcoming in One and in Channel Magazine.
