Verb-STEM: Poetry Composed with Code and Mathematical Notation
This poem emerged from a programming course I took last year, in which we attempted to model the world as programmable objects. In light of the reading I was doing outside class, on "race relations", I tried to model America in that manner. I suggest reading the poem as an objective and pessimistic view of society from outside, from an alien's perspective. This alien perspective echoes Yusef Komunyakaa's de-familiarization in "Ode To The Maggot." From this perspective, stereotypes take on an almost ontological, unchanging and ever present, nature.
C:\Root\Files\TheAmericanAPI.exe
public class Token extends BlackMale { private String job;
public Token(String name, int age, String crime, String job) { super(name, age, “none”); this.job = job; }
public String toString() { return “This is a token nigga named “ + super.getName() + “, who is “ + super.getAge() + “ and serves as a token”; }
public String rat() { return “Hey officer...”; } }
This text was originally presented at the National Collegiate Honors Conference, with the prolific mathematician and writer, Rebecca Jackson. It won the student poster competition award in the category of Arts and Humanities! The text was subsequently published in the 2015 edition of Eclectic - an award-winning art and literary magazine.
Our belief continues to be that natural human language fails in the face of unspeakable conundrums. Following this failure, mathematics and computation rescue us.