With lines from “How an Algorithm Denied Food to Thousands of Poor in India’s Telangana” by Tapasya, Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava, and Divij Joshi, a Pulitzer Center reporting project.
we enter
but don’t exist inside
we wait at the threshold of empty plates
we press our palms against the cracked doorframe
we carry the dust of our red soils
we trace the lines of hunger on our children’s ribs
we can’t conceive of owning a car
we live in a slum clenched like a fist
edges of hope fraying against every wall
shadows pooling where light once was
with eyes as lanterns
slicing through the data mist,
we saw our ration card disappear
we saw the screen flicker like it knew us better
we saw our lives reduced to errors
we saw machines speak
and men obey
with ears as hollow shells
straining for any pulse,
we heard the cursor blink louder than hunger
we listened to portals locked from the inside
we caught whispers that called us fake
we heard static
where an apology should be
with nose as a witness
to what the system can’t smell,
we smelled rust rising from shut-down ration shops
we smelled sweat pooled under ceiling fans
we smelled ink drying on rejection slips
we smelled absence
the kind you can’t clean
with mouth as an input
the system never saved,
we whispered our ID into the void
we tasted rejection coded in English
we chewed silence where help should be
we asked, asked, asked
but the computer had already decided
because authorities neither visited us
nor trusted us
print (“they believed their algorithm.”)
with hands as broken cursors
stuck in endless loops,
we will fold our prayers into paper boats
and drop them into the mouth of the machine
that erased us
we will wait at the threshold of empty plates
we will press our palms against the cracked doorframe
we will carry the dust of our red soils
we will trace the lines of hunger on our children’s ribs
we exit
but don’t exist inside.
This poem was my entry for the Pulitzer Center Fighting Words Poetry Contest: Poetry in Response to Current Events.
While you’re here, check out my other poems here.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of my imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental. || Contents of this poem should not be reproduced in any manner without permission.
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