Resistance to by Alex Saum

Where is the poem? I google the obvious and the algorithm spits back Poe’s “The
Raven” to me. I find this surprising, but not completely wrong.

I ask an AI about this search result, and the bot responds that the engine is designed
to predict what I am looking for; never mind that I never cared for the Gothic and was
never truly a Romantic—or was I one, after all?

Where is the raven? I wrote one made of codes, cables, and light that was meant to
live

somewhere in between my bedroom

in Berkeley and /

the server of a poetry magazine which,

I have found out (thanks, DNS),

sits somewhere along a road called Matthews, in the Californian

city of Menifee and, of course,

always, always,

somewhere along the pyramidal lines of wherever you are now clicking through.

Now, that poem is there and is also rapping, tapping at your chamber door,
waiting to be summoned again by your own machine where it will be made whole
again. Perhaps, the algorithm was right, and I am a dark romantic with the internet
for a beak. Never mind, nevermore.

Please download “resistance to_LAR_Saum”, save to desktop, unzip the file, open
the folder “resistance to_LAR_Saum” and double click on “index.html”. This should
launch the poem in your preferred browser and,

you can relax because no matter where you click, the online copy will always

carry you through.

Alex Saum-Pascual is author of #Postweb! Crear con la máquina y en la red (2018) and numerous articles, special issues, and book chapters on digital art and literature. Her digital poetry has been exhibited in galleries and art festivals internationally. She is Associate Professor of Contemporary Spanish Literature and New Media at the University of California, Berkeley. www.alexsaum.com