It’s not like you don’t know

Then she tells me the internet in China is a hole
you throw yourself into with every click. That’s dumb,

I say. We’re sitting together to eat flapjacks and complain
about messages not getting through, just encoded crumbs

and a knowingness of watchers who speak whole-number
sums, a pink-plate puzzle to keep us apart. It’s malware of the mind

with no need to censor when there is already such erosion
by sugar struggle e-petitions that urge you to like my thumb-up

under Who Does It For You? We should talk more, I click,
I mean say, about – and the screen is purged, goes black

because she might be the internet in China, a version of free
that walks a borderline of disorder into darkweb deliverance

while I screw about post-structuralism and if I’m too fat
to fuck. Perhaps if I lived in China I would get some sleep,

not stay up in approval of her pre-approved dissent, or keep
tapping out these hollows in the language of the problem.

Annabel Banks (annabelbanks.com) is an English writer of poetry and prose, some published, some prize-winning. She lectures in English and Creative Writing for Falmouth University where she is writing up her practice-based poetry PhD, ‘Poetry and the Archive’. Most recent work can be found in Lockjaw, Jungftak and Inky Needles.