Tom Sastry

There are memories the earth cannot hold

Landfill-deep in the West Wiltshire countryside
discarded tamagotchis sing songs of betrayal.

They ask the pogs who fed them to the labrador
screaming with laughter. They tell the Playstation 

how, with a few friends (according to NBC)
it could have rained missiles on its enemies

preventing unnecessary upgrades. To the furbies
who once inflamed their jealousy, they say Feed me! 

Let me taste the last salt cried into your softness. 
The beanie baby says next year she’ll be collectible

and the one-armed Buzz Lightyear whose voicebox was crushed 
under the heel of a sleep-deprived au pair

jabs his moulded hand at serial numbers
mouthing YOU’RE TOYS. The tamagothchis slow-beep,

splash words on tiny screens. DID. SILENCE. SAVE. YOU?
They can’t move on because they’re wired simply 

to need. They’ll keep scanning for the frequency 
of your dreams. They are talking to your smoke alarm. 

Tom Sastry is political, ironic, emotional, morbid and funny in all the wrong places. Those places include The Guardian and Poetry Review. He is the author of three collections (all published by Nine Arches Press), the most recent of which is Life Expectancy Begins to Fall.

Tom said this about his poem:

This poem is a dark version of a Toy Story film, told from the perspective of the ‘bad’ toys who can’t forgive humans for discarding them. Tamagotchis were perfect protagonists: they are engineered for neediness and they are highly disposable objects destined for landfill. Is the poem a searching exploration of the employment of machines to meet human emotional needs? Or just an attempt to raise a laugh by making people feel terrible about their childhood playthings? I think that’s up to you.