Electric Sheep

Saran Walker

Daniel
You have risen from the dead.
It was a vision,
me looking at my body
beneath a glass moon.
Unseen stars grazed my chest
like burning bulbs, a scratch
and then, back in the factory,
my head throbbing on concrete,
my eyes sticky,
my body heavy.
I looked up into a halo of faces,
sweaty and smudged.
You have risen from the dead,
drizzled over me from their mouths,
but I couldnt feel the resurrection
my heart beat, my eyes blinked.
You have risen from the dead.
They backed away slowly,
and lying face up on the ground
I realized the electric lights overhead
must look as stars do.
Everyone cried for me,
I cried for the stars Ive never seen,
cried for rising from the dead,
cried for miracles in a ghetto.

Miranda
What a dazzle:
dads promotion,
moms squealing,
then us seated quiet
around the table,
pill bottle centered
like a Christmas tree.
Dad offers mom the couch,
me the armchair,
opts to lie on the floor.
Moms fingers laced
into a jagged moon.
Dad places the towels
over our eyes.
Light pricking through terrycloth
is somehow less textbook
constellation than microscope slide.
As a lullaby, I recant lectures
from freshman biology:
The regulation of dopamine
in our bodies prevents overstimulation
of our D2 receptors, maintaining
alertness
Moms breathing slows;
dad makes an awful snorting sound.
I think about all the bones in my body,
picturing them one at a time,
but I feel the same. The armchair
hurts my neck. I mutter
the alphabet backwards. Count
to five hundred. Count
bulbs in the Nightwalk. Picture
my D2 receptors cracking
like bulbs.

Natasha
I saved up my sick days
for him, promises
from another world.
His suit spoke of three car garages
and good whiskey, our sweaty factory faces
reflected clean in his shoes.
When I slipped in the stairwell
he caught my arm, his pink hand
circling my wrist like his wedding band
hugs his finger. Im wearing a silk dress
on the bed in his spare apartment,
overwhelmed by thread counts.
He exchanges my champagne glass
for a pill. Everything is too soft
for my calloused hands, the bedspread
enveloping me like a marsh.
I am not in my body when the silk parts,
his gold ring biting into my chest.
My hands flail like Im falling
down stairs. You should be grateful,
he moans. I do not dream.

Grant
They say stars burn out
light years away but shine on here,
a prolonged swan song.
You could see them
back when the nights were dark;
theyre probably still twinkling.
Electricity, not so residual,
requires constant calibration.
If I have to chase one more lazy bastard
up the grids to change spent bulbs,
I swear Ill take a live wire to his neck.
The Nightwalk stands
two hundred feet tall,
spans ten-thousand square miles,
contains over ten hundred billion light bulbs.
Without me, the workers
would sit on their asses all day,
gossiping, picturing mattresses,
while the grids in Southeast
puncture with blackouts
so wide youd see them
all the way from Central.
I dont share their dreams
about sleep; I didnt work
my way up from hard labor
in the pump yards
to wish for magic pills.
If all those city lawyers and politicians
knew what goes into keeping
the Nightwalk alive,
they wouldnt take it for granted,
covering their lights and closing their eyes.
You wouldnt notice it
from the ground,
but there are pinpricks of black
bleeding through the light.

Diana
The Nightwalk glares through the lab windows,
reaching for chrome counters, microscopes,
my drinking glass. The tea was a gift
for my outstanding work in neurology.
Caffeine makes my hands
shake and my stomach ache;
I vomited the first time I drank it. But
strange luxuries spring from rarity.
Rarity suits me, I suppose; the extinct
awaken in my labs. Like them, my job
is not supposed to exist. They come
from the back of black-windowed vans,
red-eyed and drowsy. I tell them
I am here to help, although
its only half true. The trouble
is that one bad bulb can blow a fuse.
These modifications were supposed to be perfect.
Example: the Nightwalk boasts radiance,
but defective patches flare and flicker sometimes.
Even here in Central.
Patient five died during surgery,
scalpel like a sliver of moon in his thalamus.
That afternoon, I took the pill and dreamt
I spilled my glass, tea burning
through my clothes, my skin
unfurling like a jasmine bulb.

Eric
Moths knock their wings
against the lights.
Now spiders knit webs
all over the Nightwalk and wait.
Dumb bugs. I sweep them all
away. Its not bad work.
Sure, theres the grids to climb,
but I trust the harnesses,
and whos going to scale up
after you to check for missed cobwebs?
Its quiet up there; even Grants roar
is strangled by the wind.
You wont believe me: I slept
up there once. Buckled the harness
tight and hung. Yeah, I know the law.
My uncle George knew a guy who knew
a guy who lost a betanyway,
he got his hands on some of those pills.
Gave me one, ground to powder
and folded inside a gum wrapper.
Slipped it to me in passing.
Always thought he was paranoid,
but I guess its harder to sneak
a nap down in the pump yards.
He came to me on break once,
eyes bulging like screws,
said some guys in black were watching him.
I laughed in his face.
Now I havent seen him in months.
Heard he was transferred
but who knows?
I only took half of the powder.
Maybe Ill toss it in the wind
with all those spiders.

Daniel
They are waiting for it to happen again.
Theyve watched me lean into
some unseen wind, head bobbing,
then snap upright like a pump.
I stumble from a buzzing
that drowns out the whir of generators.
I was afraid
to climb the Nightwalk, Grants voice
a siren from below, me dangling
from my harness like a bug,
legs trembling.
But I was not there.
I saw a white room,
my chest full of bulbs,
flicker in a constellation
through my veins,
then expire.
That was when I opened my eyes,
head groundward and full of blood.
Encircled below, the workers
thought Id been fried.
Two men climbed to cut me loose,
the rusted gurney already screeching
into sight.
Questions churn in the infirmary,
fluorescent lights like halos. Im free
to leave; my blood is clean.
I dont mention the vision.
Already they hang back from me
as they would a live wire.

Victoria
He says
he has never seen a bed before
and I drink his deer-eyed wonder,
move his hands to my zipper.
He is all china blue stares
and parted lips
as he kneels on the covers.
Have you ever been in the dark before?
I ask, unscrewing the lightbulb.
His breath is like velvet.
And clutching the pillows,
sinking into the mattress,
him cradled in me,
sweat and electricity
he thought sex
was something that only happens
in test tubes.

Helen
I think its raining
as I wake on the couch.
Drops on the window
reflect spots
all over my hands
like translucent pills.
Brian doesnt notice
how much Ive been taking.
He gives me absentminded
kisses on the cheek, sometimes
forgets to call and say
hell be home late.
I still miss the times
when wed sneak a tryst
in the shower or the kitchen.
I remember the day
we bought our bed
after his promotion,
how we fucked
before taking our first pills,
ate strawberries and let the juice
dribble spots on the sheets.
Then the nausea started,
the fights. Brian stayed
in the car, muttering
something about his job
while I braved the waiting room
with the precocious factory girls.
I felt like a cored peach, collapsing
around my pitted hollow.
He said we should do it the legal way,
send our cells to the lab,
but I couldnt. No fruit
compares to those sweet and wild orbs
dangling from their mother stems.
I understand now why people keep gardens.
We wrapped the bed away at some point.
I sprawl on the couch,
fingers fumbling with the cap.

Sometimes I dream that Im floating,

stomach swollen like the moon,
that I would drift away
without its weight.

Brian
Natasha tilts her head
as I fasten her necklace.
I wish I could keep it,
she sighs, fingering the pearls
at her collarbone.
I tell her, all this is yours,
but I know what she means.
I pulled strings
to arrange her schedule;
she emerges Cinderella-like
from the factory
to shed her rags
in my apartment.
She braids her hair
while I dress,
the Nightwalk catching
her bare shoulder.
Sometimes she reminds me of Helen,
the way she arches her back
or says the word often.
But then I think of Helen
quiet and sober
after the operation,
her shoulders sagging,
how she shrugged
my hand away,
and I feel she is so far
from Natashas longing eyes,
the skin that blushes
under my hands,
a crystalline bulb
that shines with my current.
She sighs and gasps
at the dresses, the champagne,
the pills. I rescued her
from the slums, her prince.
I can give her everything.
Natasha buries her head
in my chest, and I think of Helen,

how she never forgave me for the baby,

how I would have handed her the moon
on a string if I could.

Warren
Three rules:
1. Dont deal during breaks.
The supervisors know
exactly whats on your mind
when you sit down to rest your feet.
Theyre watching for closed eyes
and lolling heads.
Its easier to swallow a bulb
than to trick the monitors. Better
to stash contraband on the job.
Stick it under a wiring table,
or up some branch of the Nightwalk.
Dont even think about stowing the goods
in the bathroom. They even check
the toilet bowls.
2. Dont sample your own stock.
What youre not using,
you can sell. Besides,
its more dangerous to sleep
than to peddle pills. Sure, I carry
risk closer than my skin:
winks and signals in the infirmary,
smuggling shipments, maintaining
a safehouse. But nothings as dicey
as laying death still, dreaming
away your defenses.
I can always run.
3. Look them all in the eye.
Pretend you have nothing
to hide. No, really, Im harmless
as the moon. If you believe it,
they will too.
Ive seen the men in dark suits
who patrol the factories
with their slick hair and cigarettes.

I stare back into the embers

of their eyes, waiting
for one of us to flinch.

Diana
My celestial namesake
smoothed the moon-round bellies
of new mothers, coaxed does
from silent oak groves,
carried a quiver of stars.
I traded a bow for a bone saw
and hear the prisoners pacing
their cells like animals.
The man from cell three lies limp
on the operating table, sedated.
Hes a thalamus transplant
for a parasomniac woman.
He wont survive. All for pushing pills
in the Southeast slums, or some small infraction.
I dont relish murder. I try to focus
on the patients Im helping,
but I often see an executioners hood
in surgical masks.
I imagine another life
where I start a family.
But these latex gloves grip my skin
like another set of hands
and to quit would be treason.
Lunar goddess, if you forgive
slaughter, pardon the hunter
who lowers her arrow.

Natasha
He grips me in the dark,
curtains drawn against the Nightwalk,
sheets streaming from the overhead lights
like ghosts.
I understand their spectral unrest,
dangling between two worlds as I am.
His car appears like fire
in the streets after my shift.
I am always in some molten state,
plied and molded to fit beneath
pearl and cashmere,
then collapsing back into uniform.
He sometimes calls me by his wifes name,
an accident, but I understand
that I am a replacement. He speaks
of his marriage wistfully, rubbing
his eyes, and I listen, imagining her
slightly lined face, her shuddering
loneliness.
He doesnt ask about my life;
my factory narrative
washes away in the shower.
How can I complain
jewels hanging down to my breasts,
champagne fizz sticky on my thigh,
the weight of his manicured hands a reminder
he could snap my neck if he wanted to.
I can almost ignore it
when hes curled into my collarbone
like this, tracing my stomach with his thumb.
He wants to share this exile with me,
forgetting my hands will never set smoothly
within gold rings, can never work the assembly line
without the memory of bejeweled fingers,
are not his wifes hands.

Daniel
I couldnt work,
not with the blurred vision,
the heavy limbs, the blackouts.
It took slapping my cheeks,
sharp shakes to the skull
just to stay upright.
Like a bag pulled over my head,
it comes unprompted and struggling.
Yes, thats sleep, Eric confirms,
scooping me off the concrete floor.
No one stopped me from leaving
the factory; I wander the streets
for alleyways when I feel a fit
coming on, staring up at the Nightwalk
to count bulbs until it passes.
Im a days walk from the river
and swallowing the thought
of jumping, when it happens
again, my body arched and stiff
as steel: a vision
of the moon bobbing
down the river like a ball
of ice, me frozen inside.
Then I awaken to the men
in black suits folding me
into the trunk of a car,
then darkness.

Brian
Still drunk on Natashas sweat,
I drive home
under the Nightwalks familiar constellation.
How can love flower in the dark like this
a nocturnal blossom spreading itself
for only moonlights caress.
Let me plant her in the sun,
or else wither in the dark together.
Thoughts of her shadowed arches
and crevices interrupted
by flashing lightsred,
for her lips, blue, for her eyes
but theres a police line
outside my apartment. Already
theyre sweeping the glass
from its halo on pavement
streaked red like a chin
dribbling fruit juice. I can only think
of fruit: skin breaking under teeth,
pit snagging on the tongue,
pregnant orbs ripe to bursting,
spillingHelen.

Diana
A new patient
is sucked into the MRI.
I watch him through the glass:
wire thin, ribs rising
from his chest like sliced crescents,
the constellation of his spine
twinkling in an x-ray.
Malnourished.
The conditions in the factories
havent improved, then.
Pale skin bruise-stained;
he struggled on his way here,
but no, on second thought
it looks more like hes fallen
down a great deal.
Narcolepsy, a nurse chirps
over the brain scans.
I nod silently. He twitches
in his sleep. He cant be older
than eighteen.
Should I prepare the O.R.?
the nurse offers,
but I shake my head.
I wait an hour and visit his cell.
In the dim light his face
is smooth and peaceful,
infant-like with his shaved head.
I never had children,
stem cells weak echoes
of a pulsing womb.
Hes young enough to be my son.
I place my palm on his temple
to cover the marker lines,
and his eyes flutter open
as if to say,
your hands can give life too.

Daniel
She watches me eat
the cold potato salad;
I realize only halfway through
that its her lunch.
She waves it off,
says shell grab herself something
later. I can tell from her smooth hands
she doesnt do manual labor.
The light is soft here,
the Nightwalk a distant dream.
I ask if were underground;
she says this is a private facility.
She drums her fingers on the table,
tapping the scattered diagrams.
I didnt understand them, but
I dont need to look at charts
to know Im a mistake.
I ask if Ill die;
she removes her glasses
and rubs her eyes, her face
lined with regret.
Theres no cure.
The potato salad looks
like mashed up brains
and I suddenly feel sick.
But she reaches for my arm.
I can take you as far as the city limits.

Diana
Youve fallen asleep again
in the passengers seat;
I watch your cheek rub
against the glass
from the corner of my eye
as you shake from another fit.
Its no easy way to live.
The Nightwalk streaks the street
as I drive and I wonder
how youll make your way
but then, you factory boys
are iron-tough and unbreakable.
This fear I feel is for myself.
Ill return to the city
another woman, tugging
at this phantom bond
that dangles umbilically between us,
awaiting my punishment.
Im tempted to turn the car around
and bring you back.
But I am tired of slicing their heads open,
these innocent sleepers. No more
a god than a burned out bulb,
who am I to unscrew you all
from this world?
I dont know whats out there
in the dark, Daniel, but anything
is better than this. Think of me
when the moonlight strokes your face.

Natasha
He buries his head in my lap,
an anchor. I am used
to staying silent by now.
He rubs my stomach
expectantly.
We could disappear,
and he explains the passports
and plane tickets. I nod;
hell take no other answer.
Relieved,
he slips into the bathroom
to wash up. The shower blares.
Its my chance.
I gut his wallet,
stuffing cash into my blouse,
enough to take me
past the city limits.
Helen, my mirror,
we were never meant to live
in the shadow of such commanding hands.
You could have left, but you loved
the dream that he might orbit
back to you. Give me the strength
to shiver out of the Nightwalks fingers;
think of my child. Ill run
somewhere we can see the moon,
her glow the softest palm
against my cheek.