Engines Within the Throne

We once worked as clerks
               scanning moth-balled pages
into the cloud, all memories
outsourced except the fuzzy
               childhood bits when

I was an undersized girl with a tic,
they numbed me with botox.
               I was a skinsuit
of dumb expression, just fingerprints
over my shamed

               all I wanted was snow
to snuff the sun blades to shadow spokes,
muffle the drum of freeways, erase
               the old realism

but this smart snow erases
               nothing, seeps everywhere,
the search engine is inside us,
the world is our display

               and now every industry
has dumped cubicles, desktops,
fax machines into developing
               worlds where they stack
them as walls against

what disputed territory
               we asked the old spy who drank
with Russians to gather information
the old-fashioned way,

now we have snow sensors,
               so you can go spelunking
in anyone’s minds,
let me borrow your child

thoughts, it’s benign surveillance,
               I can burrow inside, find a cave
pool with rock colored flounder,
and find you, half-transparent
with depression.