Dazzle Camouflage from The Lam by noraa kaplan

the brilliant filaments of my busy face
push through like play-doh

caving in on itself
the dizzying array
rearranges itself to face me
and i uncover a .jpeg artifact
time-stamped, pixelated
in front-facing flash
a screen capture of eyes bloodshot red
eyes like you’ve never seen before

i watch my movements on the screen
like the slapstick sight gag with the mirror
and the choreographed double

stick out my tongue at “myself”
if that’s your real name
make sudden movements to test the reaction time
of those little phosphorescent lamps
red, blue, and green
which dangle like anglerfish in a kind of precarity
i instinctively understand but fail to condone

• Spoken Word
• poetry
• Providence