The Hatch

That sound   that midnight thrum and hush
alive   electric   fillings drilled
compressed by anesthesia   pain
a ledge beneath which ledges fall
away   cicada radios
control your private frequency
cull information   auto-fill
before it’s clear what’s being asked
hacker gods   phishers after souls
or credit cards   whatever’s worth
anonymous repurposing
impossible to know who’s who
when everyone’s displayed   disguised
by user name   no alias
too false to breach security
the smartest person in the room’s
the room   there’s nothing you can’t say
or won’t reveal   you follow   lurk
between assumed identities
in parallel   apparelled in
transparency   are followed home
by sound   enormous   strobed   a drone
crescendo hovering above
your bed to hear its listener
exhale   breath rasps as if through mud
tinnitus louder than the din
you cannot hear to think   so sleep
clench eyes and ears against the dark
as children sought by reavers will
to be unheard   invisible

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George Witte‘s three collections are Does She Have a Name? (NYQ Books, 2014), Deniability (Orchises Press, 2009), and The Apparitioners (Orchises Press, 2005). New poems have been published or are forthcoming in Antioch Review, Hollins Critic, Hopkins Review, Measure, and Nimrod.

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Image: László Moholy-Nagy, “From the Radio Tower, Berlin“