MK Francisco

NARRATIVE ALIBI

After Pasolini’s Decameron

in a summer downpour
you can trust no one

barefoot backflips
a game of catch
a tightly wrapped corpse

we want less malice
less stain

leaves fall from a white horse
lying to your face

spring bee spitting
brute insect rubbing

the opposite of laughter
is singing with your eyes closed
judgment fluttering against your eyelids

we want more earthquakes
more filthy eruptions

show us how to feel
protect us from what we want
but don’t let’s not

blank panel in a triptych
better to dream it

CIRCLE OF MANIAS

You’re a nobody. You’re a robber baron. You’re a livestock saboteur. You’re an AI hallucination in a manic tailspin. You’re a handsome assassin. You’re the result of an unhappy algorithm. You’re eating a dish of needles to stay alive. You’re dispensing Fortune 500 soft skills with unlimited power to wound. Recognizing the corrupted child inside your father. In decomposition: the former teen idol posts hate to take your feelings ransom naked baby against his chest. Nothing is ever over. Even as a different person. An act of participation requires submission. Public lands dissociate as data mining backhoes excavate, scrapers of the enshittification. You’re a body of moods.

MK Francisco lives in Seattle Washington. A graduate of the University of Washington MFA program, her writing has appeared in Fence, Quarterly West, and Santa Clara Review. Her book Insects of the Data Lake is forthcoming from Inverted Syntax.