Two Poems

Kyle Booten

Autocomplete #2

 
 
I stole something in San Bruno.
I stole an iPhone, and I wept, I wept!
And stole a horse, and slapped my head.
Who will make me whole, I said,
 
to myself but equally to you,
you who hide behind that waterfall,
you who dwell in that shimmering shelter.
(Or am I taking you too literal?)
 
Wandering around an Albuquerque
airport terminal, who dare forget
about you? The people here are mushy.
They are pure government.
 
I should have kept that horse, I think.
I’d ride it through the solid ground,
deep where it is very cool,
5 mph. I’d get around.
 
 
 
 

Nixon in Iceland

 
Nixon in Iceland
he is cold           jet-lagged           rare           the president
who closes
the iron door
 
a bucket of jet fuel
she is flammable           viscous           cosmopolitan           pudding
jet fuel in Iceland
self-evident
 
Nixon in Iceland
gets away with it
like Chaplin like Lenin
best jumper in school
 
Iceland in Iceland
an Iceland’s island
equal to Iceland
but deserted           free-zoned           mental           core
 
and vaster

Kyle Booten is a postdoctoral fellow in the Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth College, where he is designing literary interfaces. “Autocomplete #2” was written with phrases suggested by Google Search’s autocomplete feature. One such phrase (“wandering around an Albuquerque airport terminal”) is very nearly the first line of the poem “Gate A-4” by Naomi Shihab Nye.