1.
if you look closely—and you will—you’ll see not parts, but the suggestion of parts. the only limit is
the imagination, which naturally, turns to sex. did you ever play the original sims? did you ever
purchase the expansion pack? and was it the one where you are haunted by karl marx, who reaches
out the blue screen and grips at your lapels, or the one where there’s a shopping mall for dogs? i try
not to lucid dream. i’m riding in a car with charlize theron. i try and change the scene; she is replaced
with another actress who looks much like charlize theron. a scarf around her hair, almost-charlize is
laughing as we pass a field of horses. the music that plays is forever soothing when you’re in build
mode. maybe to allay the vertigo of no material limits. yes, a certain vertigo can plague the teenage
architect. but what i remember of utopia is statelessness. the smell of manure piled shoulder-high in
the marble halls of parliament. many lifetimes i spent hunched within the nation’s narrow margin.
thought marginalia is a pretty name for a girl. the ledger referred to life but called it, instead, slow death.
most of the mansions in my simulated neighborhood collected bodies under the roses. under
capitalism, the soft petals had no scent. under the influence of love, i drove to vegas and i married
myself. one morning as she was unloading the dishes, my wife combusted. through the flames, she
mouthed something spontaneous, which remains undocumented.
2.
omnipotence is fine, but money’s better. money imagines we exist. there is no elsewhere of its
imagination. so spend yourself, or get spent. i have this dream i am living inside a sims house designed
by william morris. a thief steals across a wall of strawberries. you can pick my fruit, the architect says,
magnanimous in his style of dress and pose. you can tell his house is socialist because the servants’
rooms are built more spaciously. the actress looks up at me in pity, from where she’s trying on my
suits of armor. there is no need for military in a simulated city. placed in build mode, nobody ever tries
to leave. i am practicing my philanthropy in a gilded mirror, which, to contemporary eyes, would seem
ornate. you’ll notice i have no specific cause. i check my vitals on my watch. my interest rate says i’m
dreaming. i say will you change the dream, this one is too small.
3. i think it’s interesting how the god of this world seems determined, so determined to kill everyone
and then to photograph their ghosts. and then to hang the ghosts above the mantle. the fire goes out.
the spirit moves as breath, making it difficult to catch.
Max Gregg’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Exposition Review, Tiny Spoon, Afternoon Visitor, Iterant, Poetry Daily, blush, Hot Pink, and Permanent Record: Poetics Toward the Archive (Nightboat), among other places. They are a child of the millennium, and their favorite Sims family is the Goths. They were a 2024 Lambda Emerging Writer and hold an MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia.