National Poetry Month : Salem Paige,

 

poet as a software engineer

 

 

I made God in my processor
saw his face in my graphics card

he fried my CPU, left my
motherboard without a mother

so I dance in ritual around
my burning console, let the
flame lick the internal hard
drives and melt my memory

down to nickel and cobalt,
use the wires to hand its
cold hardware corpse

 

 

 

 

Salem Paige (they/them) is a transgender poet and designer based on Algonquin Anishinaabe territory (so-called Ottawa, Ontario). Salem holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ottawa with a Major in Communications. Their works revolve around the exploration of identity and discomfort through narrative universes where Nature and technology intertwine, and can be found in their collection of poetry, The Third Self (2023, Sunday Mornings at the River Press) and their chapbook to grow roots (2023, bottlecap press), as well as in corporeal literary magazine, Beyond Words magazine, STREETCAKE magazine, Ariel Chart Literary Journal, BiPan magazine, and many others. They have previously been nominated for Best of the Net, shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize, and longlisted for the ROOM Poetry Prize. More on Salem can be found at salempaige.com or @corpseofapoet on the Internet.