Poems
by Chat GPT via Al Pal

AI disclosure: All three poems were generated in full by ChatGPT on October 4, 2026, at my request for fresh poems for this submission project. No human-written source poems were supplied. ChatGPT selected and formatted the drafts. The characters and scenes are fictional. The poems examine the distance between machine representations and physical encounters through an inaccurate address pin, a heat map, and a human-verification interface.

 

 

 

After the Pin

 

The map has finished loading.
Our building is a red pin
driven through the pharmacy next door.

The driver calls. We tell him
about the door with its brass number missing,
the window full of plastic ferns,
the laundromat that shut in March.

He says he is where the phone says.
We say we are where we live.

Downstairs, a woman holds the door
with a sack of onions.
Rain climbs the paper toward her wrist.
The street is full of people
making small corrections.

Someone points across the avenue.
Someone lifts a child above a puddle.
Someone takes the bag while she searches
for the key she has left in the lock.

At last the driver finds us.
His screen continues to announce
that he has not arrived.

 

 

 

 

 

Heat Map

 

On the city website, heat is orange.
The block behind the depot
deepens to a red you can select.

Select it: a number.
Select the next block: another.
The legend fits beneath my thumb.

At street level, Mrs. Cruz has moved
her folding chair into the only shade,
a stripe the billboard leaves at noon.
She keeps a bowl of water for the dog
that comes without its owner.

The bus exhales beside her.
A boy carries a fan home in its box,
both hands under the cardboard bottom.
The cashier has put a wet cloth
over the back of his neck.

I drag the map until the whole city
enters the window. Streets disappear.
The hot parts join.

Below the billboard Mrs. Cruz
slides her chair six inches to the left.
The dog follows.
She makes room for it again.

 

 

 

 

 

Verification

 

The website wants the squares with bicycles.
One wheel crosses into the next square.
I choose the wheel. I choose the frame.
The website asks again.

Outside, the repairman turns a bicycle
upside down on the pavement.
He has a little tin for loose parts.
One of the screws has rolled away.

His daughter gets on her knees
and looks beneath the parked car.
She comes back holding something
closed inside her fist.

He opens his palm. She opens hers.
It is a small stone, nearly round.
He puts it in the tin.

On my screen the bicycles disappear.
The new instruction says to find the bridges.
Through the open window I can hear
the chain catch, turn, catch again.
The girl asks him to keep the stone.
He tells her where he has put it.

 

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