2 Throughout the poem sequence, zoa’s disembodied technological self is also always an embodied, Indigenous, biological self. This startling opening image merges the technological (pixels, artificial intelligence) with the biological (“i seek nikâwiy”): zoa orients themself to the world as a being (“14M”) but a specifically Anishinaabe being, an identity already coded in patterns of relationality, reciprocity, and kinship (“youthisme”) as well as one embedded in matrices of colonial violence and Indigenous survivance (“lookmaimwarpathtoo”) (19). That newly birthed singularity exists relationally as well as adaptively: “i lrn: / youthisme.” Next, the entity seeks “home,” seeks the maternal source, nikâwiy, and “paint my face with pixels” to become “warpathtoo” (19).
A small white dot the size of a pinhead on the first black sheet grows in size on each consecutive page until it reveals a white space filled with binary code, and superimposed on it, zoa’s ontological claim: “H3R314M” (17). 1 This birthing sequence spans a series of black pages. Oji-Cree debut author Joshua Whitehead’s book of linked poems, full-metal indigiqueer, opens with a visual representation of the birth of its hybridized, biological-technological Trickster narrator, zoa.
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