print previewback LEAH FALK
States and Instructions for the Universal Machine
after Alan Turing
Let the body be a difference,
engine that pries and hauls the fence
separating the loose world:
bridge of teeth
snapped from the gums,
ghost of the child to come.
~
A woman is called to the yard
as a family quietly
loads their pockets with pears
from her dying tree.
~
Out of the dead,
no stalk grew as expected
or gorged its capillaries
on the color of heaven.
~
What, then, ran
in the veins? Rain
on twenty umbrellas
at the churchyard.
~
Repertoire for eye and eraser,
pointer and thigh. A world built
in a few movements: stop, look,
speak, move on.
~
At the university, the chapel towers grew awhile and,
as they neared the limestone body’s end,
suddenly swerved—hoarded breath
in fists of iron.
~
Could we have built the world
with only these directions?
Raise and lower the pen.
~
And with only:
Halo of flies
around the hair.
The sound of ore going back
to a favorite vein.
The heart,
gnarled fruit, let go
from its tree. 
The Machine's Guide to Grief
Out and Back
Sara Turing’s Archive
States and Instructions for the Universal Machine