Caught in the Crossfire of a Madding Crowd

By J.D. Harlock

caught in the crossfire of a madding crowd,
the child runs
into the arms of her mother
and nestles herself
‘neath a limp arm
drenched in blood, dreading
the glare of the machine
that scans the corpses
of the agitators
that dared to disturb
the order
it was programmed to maintain, and
as the child cries out for
the security her mother had promised her
here, on the streets of the city
she has spent her entire life in,
the machine stares her right in the eye
with its recalibrating sensors
and offers to return her home safely

J.D. Harlock is an Lebanese American writer, editor, researcher, and academic, currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of St. Andrews. In addition to their work at Solarpunk Magazine as a poetry editor, and at Android Press as an editor, J. D. Harlock’s writing has been featured in Strange Horizons, Nightmare Magazine, New York University’s Library of Arabic Literature, and the SFWA Blog. You can find them on LinkedIn, Twitter, Threads, and Instagram.

Photo credit: Photo by Brett Wharton on Unsplash.

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