CIRCUITS OF DATA AND LIGHT

I am kissing grandpa on the teevee. Little black box flashes and grandpa is cold glass on my lips.

I remember in prison he unscrewed a light bulb to sleep, hiding a page torn from the bible. That they beat him.

I look at the picture of the picture glow. I am in New York, grandpa is under soil and the teevee is cold glass. 

Konstantin Kulakov (he/they) is a poet and translator born in Zaoksky, Soviet Union. His poems and translations appear or are forthcoming in Witness, Spillway, Jet Fuel Review, Harvard Journal of African American Policy, Tahoma Literary Review, and Loch Raven Review, among others. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University and are co-founding editor of Pocket Samovar magazine. He lives in Washington, D.C., on occupied Piscataway and Anacostan land.