In the cave, Antigone watches
the projections, texts:
she has the wrong kind of kin
*
death arrives by phone
miscarriage told by text
Brexit broke by notification
our backs bending to liquid crystals
lapped & cradled by groins
our necks extending & crunching
unburied shame
**
Antigone’s blue face a screen
for my desires inchoate
the kings care not for brothers/
family, generations on boats
today / twenty / sixty years ago
the kings are killers & long
we have known this &
still they remain
***
pocket-sized vaults of rare earths
dropped through the fingers
smashed on the cobbles
bosses at the BL vs. Prospect
a new front for fiction
as ‘girls have complete meltdowns’
when gold silver palladium are
lockered to enforce the work ethic
****
when you came off lithium
the insects streamed from your eyes
they’re in my head
we watched wildlife programmes
on repeat – the fantasy of life
screened for clicks
Insta for the animals
but no one voted
*****
Sophocles, ever the sage
had so many messages
structured for a drama
static, familial, brutal
a phone, a phone
full of the unread & oft said
******
he killed himself
left you in London
with a ticket stub
top of the bus & everyone
finds out Amy’s dead
simultaneous alert
*******
the id we deserve
tweeting the horizon
of his delusions
fodder for historical LOLs
& shadow of a vapour
for all the rest
********
I want a corpse
for corpses, yet
not justice enough
not justice enough
Antigone needed
bros who didn’t war
fewer kings, a better chorus
the ravens didn’t save her
but gutted one another
the cusp of modernity’s end is
the compulsion to subtweet
she thinks, texting & ordering
fine linen by which she will swing
Jennifer Cooke