Algorithmic
Agatha Beins
Searching to answer the body’s axis, the body’s rotation at what degree of tilt and magnetism, there are multiple variables for consideration. Take, for instance, the divisions of labor. Take the mitochondria and the eyelash mites, the nightmares and the pacemakers. The fourth generation of a cool blue dwarf, wry eyed in old age, lays heavy numbers that wink and pool that accumulate desire into vowels and frictionless movement. Each night dyeing our neural threads while old habits sleep. Each synaptic kerning: just enough to spin melancholia, to flush our Google correlates, into second person plural. Take the boxes for sex, age, race, ethnicity and disarticulate them into data and saltwater. Yes, yes, and last night’s duststorm that unearthed our restlessness fleshed out into wandering. Our florid alveoli and capillaries contemplate the plural, their infractions spreading out spelling out the entanglement of X and Y. And there it was: once, when rosy fingers peeled away the dawn’s filaments, before synthesis, antithesis, thesis, before conjugation and declension, it was the time of time’s double-jointed etymology. Before amo, amare, amavi, amatus took our foolishness to the heart as Fahrenheit to Celsius. Yes, yes, it was just like that.
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Agatha Beins lives in Denton, TX, where she teaches women's studies at Texas Woman's University, bicycles around town, and volunteers at an amazing local farm. She probably also has some muffins cooling on a wire rack right now. You can find her work in The Laurel Review, Pebble Lake Review, Newfound, Devil's Lake, Mandala, Waccamaw, and Cactus Heart.