Melissa Guillet

Vaccine

When we are vaccinated against
ourselves, our
private thoughts
imprinted on microchips,
we are given our rites
of passage at birth,
our homelands chosen for us.

Our blood type is now
Social and National Security:
First bloodied pads,
first license,
first kiss
logged into databases,
all our eggs inventoried
in one basket.
we lose our virginity
Inside MRI's.

Hiding in what forests are left,
away from the cameras,
our passions are contaminated
by trunks burning barcodes into flesh.

we are all looking
for 15 minutes of fame, not knowing
we have only 4o feet of privacy
under surveillance satellite eyes.

My paranoia has a disclaimer:
Read up on all the facts.
How does your prison cell phone know
the right time, when
you cross the heart of your country,
unsure which side you're on?

We freeze our umbilical cords, our
telephones to the womb,
and bleed out of holes
conceived by the government.

"Hold still, child,
while we brand your arm
as our commodity.

Hooks

It hooks us –
this need for tragedy
to teeth on,
pacified by poachers
fishing for better ratings,
eating worms and chasing red herrings.

We wait with baited breath
for someone else’s outcome
as if it were our own.

The sea is so large,
yet we watch through glass tanks,
caught short
by our attention spans,
anchored in.

We hate to be left
hanging like this.




Bio: Melissa Guillet's work has appeared in Appleseeds, The Cherry Blossom Review, Imitation Fruit (winning poem), Lalitamba, Lavanderia, Look! Up in the Sky!, Nth Position, Public Republic, Sangam, Scrivener’s Pen, Seven Circle Press, Women. Period., six Worcester, MA anthologies, and several chapbooks. She teaches Interdisciplinary Arts in Riverside, RI.