I don’t want to be a teacher anymore,
even though the webpage tells me it’s the most relevant job,
wheel of algorithms, spinning me through rejection.
It does not know that the system leaves me dragged into disbelief,
with kids who can’t read going to sixth grade.
The job hunt continues;
stuck making cover letters, convincing myself
there’s interest in a job that tells me to rest two days a week,
that coffee is not an addiction but a comfort.
To a salary that makes me run,
haunted by the shadow of my own incompetence.
These are the burdens my forefathers left me,
the lies that spent them too young to leave a trace of their truth.
This webpage will ask for my race and ethnicity,
to colonize me again,
or create spaces that bear no resemblance
to the generations and cultures confined to a can,
a consumer good.
I become a ticked box, an identity flattened between code,
caught in the margins of an algorithmic tendency that says,
“Hey, this is the job relevant to you.”