Integrated,                   automated

******************************** under these federal statutory mandates,

*************certain aliens may be required

to provide fingerprint scans,

**************************photographs, facial and iris images.

Entry               and exit,

*******************a system that records arrival and departure,

*******verifies, authenticates,

*************************a physical characteristic,

********************************an attribute collected, compared

*******against a previously collected identifier,

************in accordance with,                 as used in this notice,

a person.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: the text of this poem is taken from “Test To Collect Biometric Information at Up to Ten U.S. Airports (“Be-Mobile Air Test”),” A Notice by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection on 07/28/2015, The Federal Register.

***

Francesco Levato is a poet, a literary translator, and a new media artist. Recent books include Endless, Beautiful, Exact; Elegy for Dead Languages; War Rug, a book length documentary poem; Creaturing (as translator); and the chapbooks A Continuum of Force and jettison/collapse. He has collaborated and performed with various composers, including Philip Glass, and his cinépoetry has been exhibited in galleries and featured at film festivals in Berlin, Chicago, New York, and elsewhere. He founded the Chicago School of Poetics, holds an MFA in Poetry and a PhD in English Studies, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Literature & Writing Studies at California State University San Marcos.