Smash and Grab Ends the Machine War

by Bat Collazo

Commander Smash and Grab drags her dying jackboot ass
across that squeaky blood-smeared floor
for one last job.

In the end, she thinks about bots and aliens:
the scrap-metal lamp who blinks at her, sweeter
than her ex-girlfriend’s big blue eyes;
the warlord, all goiter and gut and quadruple the balls,
all shooting blanks, irradiated to hell
—like her own isla, Borikén, back on Earth,
even before the war—bear hugs;
and him. She’s gotta dope herself on antihistamines
to swallow his DNA,
and he doesn't know what the fuck to do
with a human woman's hips,
and he’d follow her anywhere
even here
if she let him.

The machine offers fake peace—helluva sales pitch.
Her fractures are glued
with their nanotech gel—but her marrow,
her marrow—
that’s her ancestors’ marrow.
Kill the Indian, save the man, she thinks.
Synthesis is such a pretty word
for we’re gonna eat you all alive.

In the end, she thinks about humans too:
the ex-squadmate’s newborn, ten tiny fingers,
all overgrown nails on small brown fists.

“Fuck you,” she says, and hits the kill switch.
She swore she’d survive
and it’s about time
she breaks her fucking promises.

(Joke’s on her, later,
when her heart kicks up a beat.
It's always been
fucking inordinate.)

Bat Collazo is a queer, Latinx poet. Ze is the editor of Blood Unbound, and has been published in places such as The Wild Hunt, Troublemaker Firestarter, and Exist Otherwise Literary Journal. For more information please visit batcollazo.com.