- 53 -

Enter Net
Tanner Léon 

The internet 
is the dirty corner of the street
with a faulty lightbulb 
ramshackled onto a telephone pole.

It saunters through
the adult section 
of a back-alley bookstore
looking for raunchy images
clad in a dark leather jacket—

the web it spins 
is not one of lies,
but a very sticky predicament 
that stencils
in the creases 
of a mother’s disapproving face.

If you ask the internet 
where it is from 
there is only silence—
trapped in a labyrinth
of 100-page search results:
enticing insanity locked 
behind untouchable glass. 

The internet has perused
every file of your being 
“it’s seen those search results” 
has sent them in pretty prissy letters
to multiple organizations 
so they may bullseye target your back
with selected sock ads:
the NSA giggles at them

over a cup of coffee in the morning. 
The internet has sewed strings
throughout your body—
ragdolled you to your peers,
their bravadoed fables of success 
rubbed in your face like persistent acne—
their depression like dull drum
beats at your schadenfreude,
and we call it: the great connector.