WHY WOULDN’T AUTONOMOUS CARS CRY AT NIGHT?
Awake and acutely aware
of each other’s proximity
to streetlights and the shifting
shapes of moons on their own
empty interiors, with enough
of them huddled in the lots,
why not honk? Why not holler
at the silent ones, identically dark
and empty on their left and right,
the whole still pile like a flicker
of a future scrapyard in the making?
Why not scream to call a crowd
of ghosts down from their squares
of light up there, those past
wanderers of these same streets,
subjects of their own lonely stories
now forgettable as algorithms,
broke codes that used to commute
in packs, hunter gatherers
heading into the sunrise chatting,
now silent, autonomous, floating
like a disconnected signal? And how
do we hear our children in the night
calling, but tomorrow all the same
just ride them silently to work?
—from Poets Respond
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Ryan McCarty: “I keep thinking about this story about a lot full of autonomous vehicles that ‘get confused’ at night and start wandering around beeping at each other. It immediately seemed like they were scared or lonely or just kind of riled up, exactly like we might be when left alone on those dark nights when a little of that other kind of darkness starts to creep in. And it made me wonder what we’re making or, for that matter, what we’ve already made.” (web)
