FROM THE CORRIDORS
ticket holders
pass freely
---
streams
chirp
whole
nests
unpacket
---
there’s guns, sure
---
the man who does the pat-downs
notices you, waves at your dog
---
all the power
of the lanyard
you suit up
you read the terms
agreement’s scrollbar
grease-slick
---
nobody notices the broken turnstile
the receipt-laden gears
the chipped scanner
now dry, sticky
---
you fit
the headset
untangle
the velcro
from your hair
---
against your glasses
the headphones bulge
a tutorial
of air
---
blue ovals rasterize
seamless skybox
effects
---
clover
becomes
cloud
---
birds
emerge
from nothing
---
dirty finch on loop
eating bathing
idle fluttering
landing eating
bathing idle
fluttering landing
animation targets soft bodies
you intuit the barrier
---
strands of perfect berries
glimmer and sing
buffer zone fodder
bayberry for winter warbler
---
you crawl through the brush
snags
on your pack
each branch a vibration
---
you reach a soft handled glow
an exit lit blood red
you turn your wrist
pow it’s easy
a gentle hand
on your clicker
it guides you
---
you aim with the walls
you feel encouraged, pull the trigger
---
approximate the
shattering
now increase
the radius
panic just a vector
---
confrontation:
a bad
tactic
you think of mobility
you hide with the staff
---
real
time
strategy
---
class-based
role
play
BRENDAN ALLEN is a recent graduate of Temple University's MFA in poetry. He now lives in Indiana and teaches writing as an assistant professor at Trine University. He's the creator of CentoQuest, a choose-your-own-adventure, poem-generating video game, and his work has recently appeared in DIAGRAM, Prolit, BAG, Landlocked, and Voicemail Poems.