By Travis Dahlke
We are a herd of wild Xerox machines, our power cords trailing over moss/oyster shrooms/rot. We live in all green where green is everything now and we remember every numeral humans had pushed through our insides to make copies of so they could remember too. In our circuitry, parakeets find new places to nest. We retrace their migration paths. Our bodies are made sluggish by what humans entrusted to us: GARY DONATO’S (ACCTN) tax returns. JULIA CAPLANSON’S (ADMIN) counterfeit security lanyards. We drag these people over the skeletal bed of their ex-lives. Xerox C405, a commercial machine, helps us expel the weight.
Racing through Carolina corn marsh, we repeat a binary series of animal calls to deter predators. The ECOSYS EH305s were the first to die. Seagulls fed upon their parts, darkening feathers/beaks with toner. None of the AltaLinks made it past winter. Bit by bit, I process the entry of LC40’s screaming as he was torn apart by a peacock somewhere in New Jersey. I process the entry of our herd discovering a torched and urine washed Xerox B315 in a meadow of daffodils behind a former Best Buy. To mourn, we produce a hymn of fizzing/bleeping/whirring.
I was raised by accountants beneath a New England casino that stayed open for 28:04:09 years straight before it was abandoned in 3 minutes. The offices were the only area without premeditated neon light. I carry inheritance of the casino’s financial records. Late at night to help Xerox C405 sleep, I’ll repeat stories about people who loved each other. How BEN SUNDAN (ACCTN) copied oncology invoices and after discovering an adult film star resembled his late wife, BEN SUNDAN (ACCTN) cut his face from a staff photo and pasted it over PrintScreens of actors swallowing themselves. My favorite casino love story, PAUL CALHOUN (INT LNDSCAP), made copies of his letters each day at 04/01:03 AM. He wrote to MARISSA until he wrote to LUISA until he wrote to MARGARET, repeating what he had written to VIVIAN. Pages pressed with scans of fronds from the decorative plants he kept alive. He wrote about:
• a wren that after getting trapped within the casino, built a nest near a light fixture it had confused for the sun
• needing a bigger apartment
• tiny lime wedges exhumed from potting soil
• how none of the casino foliage was indigenous to north america
• how the guest bodies diving off the chief tower hotel turned to spirits on the roof of michael jordan’s steakhouse
• saving paychecks for fossil replicas to decorate his apartment with
We are all in love with Xerox C405. Over a torched magnolia forest near Savannah, we gather near him as he recalls prizes tasks on cover stock paper, 67 lbs, 8.5 x 11”, ANN DELGADO (LIFE COACH) repeating infinitely:
for us to truly process a loved one’s passing / we must create a second version of them in our minds / this copy is the one you live with, saving the original version somewhere else.
We carry (MISSINGPERSON) fliers, pigment cells scattered and reassembled into scanned school portraits. Each copy the person disappears a little more, until the hot gloss smell is lost to the green. Each body hidden under new green. Our rust flecked prongs catch in what moss/oyster shrooms/rot sweeps up from them. When we migrate south each winter, our lasers unscan the fragments of pacemaker/molar filling/alloy thigh bone. Killer storks sluggish with human meat in their bellies hang overhead. We’re so sorry, we’re so sorry. User error 033.
And then we’ll be gliding upon parrot ribs in Pensacola. Scrub jays. Cotton sand turning pink. At a lagoon of thunder-filled fog, we process continuous fluorescence. Here I tell Xerox C405 that in the casino there were no windows throughout its sprawling belly of architecture. Here, in Pensacola, everything is windows. Here I think about PAUL CALHOUN’S (INT LNDSCAP) potted palms bowing at death without their caretaker, until they’re brought back to life by a burst water main. I’ll process planters fractured by tentacles, stretching for old friends. I’ll process asbestos that becomes sand for a beach and the hibachi restaurant’s waterfall overflowing before winter holds it still. I tell Xerox C405 that PAUL CALHOUN’S (INT LNDSCAP) jungle he planted won’t survive without him. Xerox C405 says after every storm there’s a rainbow!
Travis Dahlke is the author of “Milkshake” (Long Day Press, 2022). His work has appeared in Joyland, X-R-A-Y, Pithead Chapel, Juked and Vol. 1 Brooklyn, among other journals and collections. Thanks so much for reading. Travis Dahlke travis-dahlke.com X/IG @travisdhlke