Poem A Day – June 25, 2016

#MIDDLEBURY

Drone

Kazim Ali

Do strangers make you human

Science fiction visiting bodies as cold fact

What unknown numbers govern our genes or phones

A constant thrum from outer space

Snow makes a sound in sand

You are seen from far far above

Unheard and vanished

bodies dismember to dirt

Hardly alive, hardly a person anymore

Who will I be next and in that life will you know me

About this poem
“‘Drone’ considers our lives with drones in the sky that may kill us or just capture our images and/or our ‘data.’ But it also considers the ‘drone’ in classical Indian music, which has a different role, that of giving the temporal its constancy, a way of seeing the divine endless in the momentary. Which drone is which? Who is god now?” – Kazim Ali

About Kazim Ali
Kazim Ali is the author of “Sky Ward” (Wesleyan University Press, 2013). He lives in Oberlin, Ohio, and teaches at Oberlin College.

The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.

(c) 2016 Kazim Ali. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.

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