by Kaitlyn Spees

“Whenever stress at work builds, Chinese tech executive Sun Kai turns to his mother for support.
Or rather, he talks with her digital avatar on a tablet device, rendered from the shoulders up by artificial
intelligence to look and sound just like his flesh-and-blood mother, who died in 2018.”
—NPR

(with apologies to Emily Dickinson)

The scramble on the ‘Net,
Once techies’ mothers Croak,
Creates from social media
An Avatar, bespoke,

To speak in her Scraped Language
And look like her Scrubbed Pics—
Put up your broom, E. Dickinson—
Eternity—is this?