The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Panacea by Alison Strub

This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Panacea by Alison Strub (Milk and Cake Press 2023).

Address to Alan Turing

The mind fills with extrapolations
as these bicycle rides seem endless.
Daisies rest as if on the tip of a pen.

The machine is beautiful.
The machine is driven by algorithm alone,
by which you solve every conceivable computation.

Behind the drapes is a voice indistinguishable from a machine.
The room is occupied by few minds, but great thought.
A mind is made to be purchased and consumed.

Baskets full of apples you rode by
as the machine interpreted wonder in hyperboloids of light.
Sound is translated.

Alison Strub is a hybrid poet and visual artist who received her M.F.A. at George Mason University. Her poems have appeared in Gigantic Sequins, Salt Hill, The Seattle Review, Word For/ Word and other fine publications. Her chapbook, Lillian, Fred, was published by BOAAT Press in 2016. Her book, Panacea, was published in 2023 by Milk & Cake Press and her next book, Dust Rites, is forthcoming from Milk & Cake Press in 2026. She can be reached by telegrams and texts.

john compton (b. 1987) is a gay poet who lives in kentucky with his husband josh and their dogs, cats and mice. his latest full length book is my husband holds my hand because i may drift away & be lost forever in the vortex of a crowded store published with Flowersong Press (dec 2024); his latest chapbook is melancholy arcadia published with Harbor Editions (april 2024).