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"Command Central" by David R. Flores


​​by Alan Elyshevitz


St. Audrey hosts a trade show whose electromagnetic cordons
keep us attentive and untroubled by dreck. She conscripts an armada
of memes that float from eye to eye, preventing self-reflection.

St. Audrey bears the wattage of East Anglia through classical wires
connecting homes to commercial output. She demonstrates
how a winch of consumption may hoist us to prosperity.

St. Audrey shows us the cat in a window framed by liquidity
and lace. She walks the dog at a virtual Ely where pets disappear
through a digital funnel. St. Audrey is happy. She twerks and steals

our numbers of value, then hands a percentage to private rocketry.
A throwback to public charm, St. Audrey celebrates packaging.
She loves, truly loves the wet smell of cardboard shipped

with the overrepresentation of geese in paintings by middlemen.
At her workspace in an ionized abbey, she wallpapers hidden fees
and our temporal mistakes. St. Audrey promises lemonade

as the outcome of all our botching, so long as we agree to cosign antonyms.
Trusting her, we will not founder in systemwide crash. A black ice skid
will come to rest in synthetic fluff in which we may sleep comfortably.


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Alan Elyshevitz (he/him) is the author of a collection of stories, The Widows and Orphans Fund (SFA Press), as well as a full-length poetry collection, Generous Peril (Cyberwit), and four poetry chapbooks. He is the winner of the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review and a two-time recipient of a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. www.aelyshevitz.ink
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MASKS Literary Magazine is sponsored by the Columbia College Chicago Library and was founded as part of the Aesthetics of Research Program-an ongoing series of exhibits, events, and other shenanigans dedicated to exploring the role that libraries play in artistic process, creative community building, and resource-sharing in the arts. 
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  • Featured
  • Issue
  • Interviews
    • Natalie Arriola
    • Kim Chinquee
    • Melissa Meier
    • Miya Turnbull
    • Molly Yingling
    • Kate Wisel
  • Submissions
    • Guidelines
    • Contests
  • About
    • Masthead
    • Our Mission
  • Buy