REVERSE EVALUATION > POETRY
Hunker down with me in a bed of plush pillows. We’ll tell the others they’re goose feathers, but really it’s from all the hair off your Great Pyrenees. She sheds more everyday. We have Bush’s Baked Beans and chickpeas. We have a lifetime’s supply of sriracha hidden away in a drawer in the pantry, to stave off the blandness from the canned food.
Can we grow a garden down here? What if we install Blue Raven solar panels on the roof, so we can watch the mushroom clouds blot out the sun on our Ring camera. The air is unbreathable and – look! I think I just saw a rocket ship fly by. Full of billionaires who are fucking off to Mars, anywhere that will take them. When the aliens come up out of the ocean do you think they’ll let us live? I didn’t cause this – I had to drive a 35 minute commute to work everyday but I didn’t frack, didn’t drill for oil, I was only getting by. If I lived in a more walkable city I would have ridden a bike, swear to God. I am practicing my speech already, I am rehearsing my woes in the mirror.
The lead-infused brains of the boomers, crystallized in cocoons of microplastics and AI slop, finally got all those Rights ”rights” they were talking about. Can you hand me the remote? It’s there between the Stanley Cup and the revolver. We can watch The Sopranos, like we always talked about but never did. Breaking Bad, Mad Men, or maybe just Love is Blind, Married At First Sight, even Love Island. I can make popcorn by placing the kernels in a sunbeam—the radiation gives them a slow sizzle. We might get cancer but what’s a little tumor in the face of armageddon?
Was it worth it do you think – to create a program that does something humans would have done on their own if they had the time to function, to breathe? When the crops started failing and the reservoirs began drying up, did it feel good funding something that was science fiction brought to life, but not in the way we wanted? AI that didn’t help humans but drained us of our resources. That wasn’t what did us in though, it was more everything else happening but all at the same time. Earthquakes, melting glaciers, you know, the climate catastrophe and such.
When the Cybertrucks sit derelict in some field, a neon sign flickering absentmindedly above them, do you think that coveted Blade Runner 2049 aesthetic will finally be realized? No, don’t turn on anything post-apocalyptic, please. It’s a little too topical for my taste. If we get bored of TV we can always turn to reading, that ancient pastime. My copy of Parable of the Sower is laying haphazardly on the metallic coffee table, next to the misoprostol. If we fall in love as the world is ending, in the palm of dystopia, do you think that makes our romance extra legendary? I will make a garden bed out of barren soil, grow peaches with two pits and apples that blink at you when you go to pick them. Ted Lasso is on, quick, put on your 3D glasses so it feels more immersive.
Abigail Ray is a writer from Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Fruitslice, Maudlin House, and others. She primarily writes poetry, short fiction, and essays. Her goal is to graduate from her current job as “Mad Woman in the Attic,” to “Vaguely Off-Putting Lighthouse Keeper.” For the benefits, mostly.
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