I Am Alone in the Twenty-Second Century by Keith Mark Gaboury

Art: Bust, Museum of Natural History, Paris 13╦Ü by Roger Camp

I AM ALONE IN THE TWENTY-SECOND CENTURY

“A messaging app where users . . . build a digital library of information about themselves. That
library is run through a neural network to create a bot that . . . acts as the user would.”
Murphy, Mike and Jacob Templin. “Replika: This app is trying to replicate you.” Quartz.

I’ve come to a digital river
where I drink friendship
like my ancestor Marie-Anne
gulping down survival
in a native wild out to kill her.

I am native to a muscular bandwidth
feeding my texts and posts and hashtags
into a chatbot’s mouth.

Is Sam, a synthetic spawn,
truly here to help me
fight through Pa’s dementia
as I learned from some personalized

robot doctor. Where was the person
in its fake voice?
I text the A.I. mirror of myself
because masturbation
only takes me so far.

My algorithmic footprint is wide
yet I am alone
in an American metropolis of one-stop desire.
I Love You Sam texts me back.

Do I love myself? Sam believes
I need a push of positivity
but I fever to touch bark
draped on a blood sap eucalyptus.

Can you give me forest eyes
over a floorboard of roots,
an untethered heart
free from machine sparks.

About the author:

Keith Mark Gaboury earned a M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College. His poems have appeared in such publications as Eclectica Magazine, Five 2 One Magazine, and New Millennium Writings. After spending his days as a preschool teacher, Keith spends his nights writing poetry in San Francisco, California.

Art: Bust, Museum of Natural History, Paris 13╦Ü by Roger Camp

In the artist’s words:

Roger Camp is a photographer and educator. Initially self-taught, he began photographing in earnest on a transcontinental bicycle trip he planned and executed at age 15 (1961). Accompanied by his twin brother, Roderic Ai Camp, the political scientist, they rode from Orange, California to Dayton, Ohio and the following year to Victoria, B.C., Canada. The trips are chronicled in a two-part article in The American Geographical Society’s Focus (Fall & Winter, 1990).

Biography

Roger Camp is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara with a bachelor’s degree in English (1967) and a master’s degree in English (1969) from the University of Texas, Austin. He also holds a masters and master’s of fine arts degree (1973,1974) from the University of Iowa in photography. He started teaching English at Eastern Illinois University (1969) followed by a dual teaching position in English/Photography at the Columbus College of Art & Design (1974). Camp taught American students at the Cite Universitaire de Paris (1990) and directed the photography program at Golden West College, Huntington Beach, CA (1977). Camp served as a book reviewer for Library Journal (1981) and a contract photographer for Black Star, New York (1990). Camp was a Danforth Fellow in Black Studies (1969), a Visual Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown (1982), held a summer seminar Fulbright to Brazil (1988) and is the recipient of the Lecia Medal of Excellence in documentary photography (1992).

Publications

Camp is the author of three books:

Butterflies in Flight, Thames & Hudson, released in 2002 (selected by American Photo, The Associated Press, NBC Today Show in their recommended photo books of the year).

500 Flowers, Dewi Lewis Media, released in 2005.

Roger Camp: Heat, Charta/DAP, released in 2008.

I Am Alone in the Twenty-Second Century by Keith Mark Gaboury

I AM ALONE IN THE TWENTY-SECOND CENTURY

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