Replacement Parts

Hands of bone, hands of steel
Plastic casing, skin that feels
Eye and lens, brain and chip
Teeth that gnash and claws that rip.

As the flesh falls away, the skeleton remains.
Sinuous fibers and fiber optics
Vessels, wires, arteries, and cables
Joints, hinges, servos, and tendons
Power the skeleton forward.

A person on the other side of Earth
Inputs commands to a drone mid-flight
A family is now without a father
But the mission was a success.

We could save, we could heal
We could make our wild dreams real
But we won’t. No we can’t.
There’s no money to be made like that.

James Hamill is an Entertainment Art Technician and writer from Southern California. He has had a handful of poems published in the anthology, I Like Robots, as well as on the crime poetry blog, The Five-Two. He aspires to be posthumously made into a Cyborg.

Find more by James Hamill in the Author Index.