"we are part of the records we keep"
-Gayatri Spivak

Susan Leigh Star
27 January 1993

i

network

     and the word flares trumpets
     shining webs
     connect me
     dissolving time and space

network

     soaked with information
     all there is to know
     the little wire
     next to my bed

network

     the net
     work
     feeding the teenage son
     waiting in line for the pass
           word
     shaking the numbness from the shoulders
           the arms

ii

my best friend lives two thousand miles away
and every day
my fingertips bleed distilled intimacy

trapped Pavlovas
dance, I curse, dance
bring her to me

the bandwidth of her smell

iii

years ago I lay twisted below the terminal
the keyboard my only hope for work
for continuity

my stubborn shoulders
my ruined spine
my aching arms

suspended above my head soft green letters
reflect back:
     Chapter One
     no one can see you
     Chapter Two
     your body is filtered here
     Chapter Three
     you are not alone

iv

oh seductive metaphor
network flung over reality
     filaments spun from the body
     connections of magic
     extend
     extend
     extend

who will see the spaces between?

     the thread trails in front of me
     imagine a network with no spaces between
     fat as air
           as talk

this morning in the cold Illinois winter sun
an old man, or perhaps not so old
made his way in front of a bus his aluminium canes inviting spider thoughts
     a slow, a pregnant spider
     the bus lumbering stopped

and in the warm cafe I read of networks and cyborgs
      the clean highways of data
      the swift sure knowing
            that comes with power

who will smell the factory will measure the crossroads
will lift his heavy coat from his shoulders
     will he sit before
     the terminal

v

it's too late for romance
the chestnut tree blooms no more
the corn and pigs in this vast flat place
     travel the network too
     their genes secure in stock indexes

it's too late for bitterness

but still there is a space
      in the net

a choice of cyborgs
oh brave new world
      for the courage to choose the mundane

the rough wool of a winter coat
draped over an old back
a smell, a feel of her hair
the unfamiliar intimacy of the dancing letters

literacy
or survival

vi

am I the only one who strokes the scars
     the Frankenstein neck
     who wonders
     when the stiches will come
     out

 
Susan Leigh Star teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.