i am the machine and i work

my job used to be teaching a machine

to recognize complaints filed against police officers

that contained allegations of sexual violence

it wasn’t very hard

all i had to do was read a lot of complaints

and tell the machine words

that were commonly used in the ones that alleged sexual violence

it didn’t work though

the machine could never find anything i hadn’t already found

the person i was working for told me and my coworkers

to read more complaints and give the machine more words

but there are only so many words

at a protest in the summer of 2020

she told a crowd of people to be quiet and lie down for eight minutes

i just did it but one person awoke from her fake death and yelled

nonsense is violence

it’s also the view through my window

which is always cracked open

my neighbor sometimes sings

it’s bad but not annoying

he doesn’t mean for anyone to hear him