Android Poems

I’ll admit, I approached *Android Poems* skeptical that a sub-40-minute audiobook could leave much of an impression. Then the first track hit—*Nieman’s voice, cool and measured, delivering ‘Boot Sequence’ like a eulogy for a dying hard drive—and I was hooked*. The standout here is how Parker balances abstraction with visceral imagery. ‘Error 404: Love Not Found’ could’ve been a gimmick, but the poem’s final lines (*‘I cached your laughter / but the file corrupts at 3 a.m.’*) land with devastating precision. Nieman’s performance is a masterclass in restraint; she resists the urge to over-dramatize, letting the poems’ inherent tension speak for itself. Her pacing in ‘The Last Human Algorithm’—slow, almost hesitant—makes the poem’s climax feel like a revelation rather than a punchline. That said, the collection isn’t without flaws. A few poems (*‘Data Ghosts,’* I’m looking at you) lean too hard on tech jargon without enough emotional anchor, reading more like clever wordplay than poetry. And while the ambient sound design is mostly effective, the sudden *bloop* of a notification sound in ‘Low Battery’ pulled me out of the moment—it’s a rare misstep in an otherwise immersive production. Still, the highs far outweigh the lows. By the time you reach the final track, ‘Shutdown Protocol,’ you’ll realize Parker hasn’t just written about androids—he’s written about *us*, the way we love in fragments, remember in buffers, and grieve in loops. For fans of speculative poetry or anyone who’s ever stared at a screen and wondered where the human ends and the machine begins, this is a must-listen." "tags": [ "cyberpunk poetry audiobook