Why Worry

now that we’re Apple watched
Silicon Valley outposts all

Congo, China, Brazil, Bolivia
cobalt, gold, diamonds, copper, coltan*
brick-and-mortar serfs mine the metals
cyber-proles in hazmat white
hand-assembling devices
in sparkling clean rooms
Shenzhen Seoul Sri Lanka
they go home to unwired, fetid slums

blinking cams track our data
logged in, ponied up our passwords
checked “accept” at the bottom
after speed-scrolling
past pages of fine print
then hypocrisy
declare, I am not a robot

roads all ash, roving ragpickers
cheerleading tyrants
water level rising, “extreme” weather
short-listed for the apocalypse

Google, Amazon lock us down
Apple, Facebook record our lives

Verizon’s stacks
(now smokeless)
will hook us up
so go back to bed
click the remote

*columbite-tantalite used in capacitors of cell phones, game consoles, etc.

Dion Farquhar has recent poems in Superpresent, Blind Field, Poesis, Cape Rock: Poetry, Poydras Review, Mortar, Local Nomad, Columbia Poetry Review, moria, Shifter, BlazeVOX, etc. Her third poetry book Don’t Bother is in press at Finishing Line Press, and she has three chapbooks. She works as an exploited adjunct at two universities, but still loves the classroom, and she is active in the University of California Santa Cruz adjunct union, the UC-AFT.