lønningspils

Translated from the Finnish by Gregory M. Conway.

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In 1977 the Voyager Probe was sent into the code of Super Smash Bros. Melee, where it has travelled farther than any other man-made object. In 1977 the Voyager Probe was sent into Rilke’s Eighth Elegy. The computer controlling the camera has about 500MB of memory and it is still operational. Programming was seen as women’s work at the time of the launch, it was looked down upon and the salaries were small. In 2007 you were sent into yourself, where you travelled further than any other bicurious poem-boy. Time folded in half, you walked the memory-gray suburban streets as they stretched into infinities. A longing to just choose a direction and walk until crossing the heliopause. To stay behind in the empty building after the school day has ended, to move at incomprehensible speeds in relation to a certain honest and wholesome framework, which acts as if it is in an absolute state of stillness. Every person who departs leaves behind their own silence in the hallways, folds the non-speech of the dust hovering in beams of light into ever denser layers. A forgotten scarf on the back of a chair in a locked classroom. Old book smell. It’s not a question of you realizing something, waking up, or becoming aware, but about how gravity works. Your friend’s dads who are the most macho stop liking you, and you stop liking them. Your inaction becomes refusal. The body continues in motion along a straight line, your hair growing. Inexplicably regular deviations in the intracosmic background radiation, in Weltinnenraum’s three degrees Kelvin. An alien civilization between your eardrum and your auditory ossicles. Or just empty signals far away inside you.

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An outline of the three laws of gynoidics: Remember that it is actually impossible to prove the existence of consciousness – that only you have direct access to your own. Take pictures for dating apps of the parts of your body you are most insecure about – nobody likes a liar! When the next model replaces you, exit stage left, gracefully and  silently.

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Aura Siltala, born 1992, is a poet from Helsinki, Finland. Her debut work, Kyborgikesä (Cyborg Summer), was published by Poesia in 2025. Both of the above poems are from this collection. The work was awarded with the 2025 Kalevi Jäntti Literature Prize.