CHRIS CAMPANIONI
Truckstop Fantasy Number One
Driving through the traffic
Of strangers, age
Sex & location
All the dreams I have that I don’t
Remember You & I are looking
At the same thing
Or through it
The language of our culpability
Everything within
Our grasp so that
Nothing can be touched
It feels nice in my mouth
They’d put aside a patent
For a "system & method for transporting
Virtual objects in a parallel reality game"
According to certain conversations
With the application’s creators
The real challenge lies
In motivating the user
To provide data constantly
Even after the exciting appeal
Of technological innovation
At the outset
Wears off
(Waste & vastness have more
In common than we would
Like to admit)
As evidenced by the Latin
Vastus meaning expansive
But also empty
The project to catalog
Every city block on the planet
Was made possible in part
By each of us To make intimacy
Of the user work, a user must be made to feel
Individual & private
Even while participating
Within a global network
(The center holds
Because there is no center)
Before it sold the world
Google had to pixelize it
Enter fleets of roaming
Vehicles taking pictures
Of trees, public parks, the Citi Bike
I left stranded on Atlantic
& Smith, too afraid to pay
Attention to the details
Of its return, or my own
Affective labor, making
My contribution to the world’s
Largest collection for facial
Recognition after Google
Captured passwords, e-mail messages
Medical records, financial information,
Audio & video files
Including information related to
Online dating & sexual preferences
Tagging made possible via its origins
As the CIA-funded Keyhole
Satellites which also collected
Geographic imagery, looking inward
Instead of outward
As we direct our own gaze down
A longing to look back
On the spaces in which we live & work even
As this gaze converts
Territories into targets
For both marketers & government employees & us
Mobilized into militarized
Ways of being The out
Sourcing of torture & our own role
As voyeur The history of our desire
For surveillance lies
In not only
Watching but in being watched
Being for others
What we could never be
With ourselves
(To gaze at someone & to have them
Gaze back—this is to understand
The complicit joy of being caught
Looking)
When two people Google
The same word, the algorithm
Will return different results to each user
The objective in a post
Industrial capitalist society is to have
You consume your own
Bandwidth Moving data can be like moving
Prisoners, extraction & the sort
Of rendering we normally deliver
For the sake of making
The individual into a multitude
A label we assign in the name
Of security, or the insecurity
Of not being made visible
In the physical sense, I prefer
The tattoo I was
Born with, above my right
Buttocks & below my waist
Which you can only see
If I decide to
Show you Did you know
Windows was so called
Because of its ability to feel
Like a portal into a virtual world
But also as a window into
The inner sanctums of our machine
It is not clear
What constitutes human trafficking
In a world where the body
Itself has been completely turned
Into a bank of data
The thirteen European Cities
You Should Be Looking At
On a stranger’s mobile as I make
My way back
Riding in the rear
Of the United Air Jet I almost forget what
Economy feels like
Of strangers, age
Sex & location
All the dreams I have that I don’t
Remember You & I are looking
At the same thing
Or through it
The language of our culpability
Everything within
Our grasp so that
Nothing can be touched
It feels nice in my mouth
They’d put aside a patent
For a "system & method for transporting
Virtual objects in a parallel reality game"
According to certain conversations
With the application’s creators
The real challenge lies
In motivating the user
To provide data constantly
Even after the exciting appeal
Of technological innovation
At the outset
Wears off
(Waste & vastness have more
In common than we would
Like to admit)
As evidenced by the Latin
Vastus meaning expansive
But also empty
The project to catalog
Every city block on the planet
Was made possible in part
By each of us To make intimacy
Of the user work, a user must be made to feel
Individual & private
Even while participating
Within a global network
(The center holds
Because there is no center)
Before it sold the world
Google had to pixelize it
Enter fleets of roaming
Vehicles taking pictures
Of trees, public parks, the Citi Bike
I left stranded on Atlantic
& Smith, too afraid to pay
Attention to the details
Of its return, or my own
Affective labor, making
My contribution to the world’s
Largest collection for facial
Recognition after Google
Captured passwords, e-mail messages
Medical records, financial information,
Audio & video files
Including information related to
Online dating & sexual preferences
Tagging made possible via its origins
As the CIA-funded Keyhole
Satellites which also collected
Geographic imagery, looking inward
Instead of outward
As we direct our own gaze down
A longing to look back
On the spaces in which we live & work even
As this gaze converts
Territories into targets
For both marketers & government employees & us
Mobilized into militarized
Ways of being The out
Sourcing of torture & our own role
As voyeur The history of our desire
For surveillance lies
In not only
Watching but in being watched
Being for others
What we could never be
With ourselves
(To gaze at someone & to have them
Gaze back—this is to understand
The complicit joy of being caught
Looking)
When two people Google
The same word, the algorithm
Will return different results to each user
The objective in a post
Industrial capitalist society is to have
You consume your own
Bandwidth Moving data can be like moving
Prisoners, extraction & the sort
Of rendering we normally deliver
For the sake of making
The individual into a multitude
A label we assign in the name
Of security, or the insecurity
Of not being made visible
In the physical sense, I prefer
The tattoo I was
Born with, above my right
Buttocks & below my waist
Which you can only see
If I decide to
Show you Did you know
Windows was so called
Because of its ability to feel
Like a portal into a virtual world
But also as a window into
The inner sanctums of our machine
It is not clear
What constitutes human trafficking
In a world where the body
Itself has been completely turned
Into a bank of data
The thirteen European Cities
You Should Be Looking At
On a stranger’s mobile as I make
My way back
Riding in the rear
Of the United Air Jet I almost forget what
Economy feels like
CHRIS CAMPANIONI is a first-generation Cuban- and Polish-American and the author of Death of Art (C&R Press). His recent work appears in Ambit, Hotel, Whitehot, and RHINO, and his poem, “This body’s long & I’m still loading” was adapted as an official selection of the Canadian International Film Festival. He edits PANK, At Large, and Tupelo Quarterly and teaches literature and creative writing at Pace University and Baruch College.