Mother Medium
by Eliott Rollins

Media is a semaphore
signals pooled for Narcissist to adore
reflection gathered by sense
extension nothing more.

Breaker-box-outage spread
assault on the body more alive –
The dead that can’t remember when music heard
meant music read.
How long can your arms grow?
How narrow are your back bends?

Separate a signal from a body find a child
lost among the saturated amusements
boots kicked from the high swing in the center
of the park.
Feel unclean for size fourteen and too-large-legs
in skinny jeans be cool just have a smoke its only natural.

Mother medium made a mandate:
See my beautiful face, touch
my beautiful skin, smell my beautiful
breath, taste my beautiful
milk, and feel the beauty of my never ending warmth.

We gave that up for extensions on the feels and reinventing
the wheel. We gave her up. Sold her in chains.
We shipped her across the ocean. We made her flesh
exotic we called her breasts obscene. We crowded around
the pond to stare at our reflection too afraid to bare our nakedness.

A young creole woman rises from a running river after washing her face.
She drops a heavy piece of iron into the plantation mill.
The world does not end, and she smiles at the warmth of the sun.
Her masters find her at the river, knowing –
The progressives have outlawed flogging women, so instead she will run.

Hands lashed to bar high above head,
one foot over the other on a brand new medium: the treadmill.

Hundreds of years later, once the we know the medium is the message.
Once the land has been built for the masters and the old issues are easier to hide.
Women will be made to gather in small rooms
One foot over the other, running forward to nowhere.