Click here for the podcast, or listen to it below:

There's no way into the quarantine zone
on foot, so from my wall-screened apartment
I pilot a makeshift drone to you.
A grainy screen links up with its
end-heavy camera while I steer
with an Atari controller—
an uncertain hovercraft, black market bought.
Its whirring racket surely wakes your neighbors
as it hangs like an unsettled chandelier
beyond your open window.

A metal claw extends—
my own addition. Hours
spent in a shelled-out workshop,
more a surgeon than an engineer,
a vital organ transplant;
exchanging air-to-surface missiles
and precision laser guidance for steel fingers,
sure and strong and harmless.
(Satellite bombardments and tactical plagues—
nobody needs flying robots anymore,
not to kill.) The claw presents a twine-wrapped
package with oat bread and honey and a jug of fresh
water and pain pills in an unmarked bottle
so they will not be stolen and
rose-colored stationary with a letter
from me.

I cannot fit the machine through your window
and the grayscale video displays only pale fingers
grasping these gifts. The drone autopilots home,
while I zoom and optimize and refresh
this captured image. I need to know
the hand is yours and not some dying stranger
who takes the food
and leaves my letter
unopened.