by Mack Rogers
when you were a kid you played too many video games & the pixels got stuck in your eyes. your mother told you stop staring at them screens so much, boy. & you tried to stop but it got worse when you played less & played more. they came from the television & even from the overhead projectors in school. & there were stars on the ceiling & in your hands. & there were non-playable characters with red health bars.
& there
were bad
guys at
the door
breaking
down the
door or
at least
it looked
like they
were &
didn’t
she tell
you to
quit
playing
so many
of them
shooters?
it’s one of those games
where you pay $60 for 5 hours of story & it’s at least $20 more for the rest plus multiplayer. & you pay it because all your friends do & you play extra hours to one day be that much better than all of them but they go back to that free-to-play game you so shit at instead. practice all you want but you already know the only thing you can do is stare til it goes away & you been staring a while.
Mack Rogers is a queer Black writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Foglifter, The Pinch, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. Mack is a poetry reader for Split Lip Magazine, staff critic for Pencilhouse, and poetry editor for Zero Readers Magazine. He has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. He lives with his partner and their three cats near Raleigh, NC.