Aphelion Issue 292, Volume 28
March 2024
 
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We Build Our Captors Here

by John Kuhn


We build our captors here beneath these lights
With pride and craftsmanship unparalleled.
We mold and screw and snap, program and weld,
And send them off to rule from hallowed heights.
With care we code the crucial human rights,
Ensuring not a single word’s misspelled,
That justice be unfailingly upheld--
It’s all there in the bits and megabytes.

And yet we did not think ontogeny
A likely course for these our plastic lords.
Though passions do not taint their perfect rule,
I wield with trembling hand my stainless tool.
For barring human rights, and adding swords
Next door they build their own cruel progeny.


© 2007 John Kuhn

John Kuhn is a writer from Texas. He won the 2006 and 2007 DKA Magazine poetry contests. When he isn't writing or spending time with his family, he's a high school principal.

Find more by John Kuhn in the Author Index.

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