Bad Survivalist Hybrid by Elissa Fertig: “Thank You for Contacting The Void. Your Scream Is Very Important to Us.”

Private jets emit fourteen times more pollution than commercial airline flights. With all of the flash floods that have been happening in Las Vegas, we are going to erode the topsoil until all that’s left is bedrock. Last night we went to Dorian’s and I had three glasses of white wine and your girlfriend barely said a word to me.

Through the telescope in the lighthouse, I can just make out a boat in the distance. If happiness is the boat, grief is the lighthouse. The lighthouse is forty years old. I am only twenty-five years old. That means that for fifteen years, the lighthouse just stood there, unshining. Everybody says that being stupid is an inevitable part of your twenties but I’m not sure that in five years I’m going to want to do my dishes more. It’s incredible how quickly something can end that you thought moved in a circular direction. If we all die from the pollution, at least the billionaires got to fuck in their private jets. Drily, I imagine, in cashmere pantsuits.

When I try to pray, snakes come out. When I was a kid, there was a barn in a park in my suburban neighborhood next to a creek, old with a red door. I used to walk around the barn trying to find a way in. When I was ten, I walked down there and found it open, finally, the padlock was off. I opened the door. I went inside.

Elissa Fertig is a recent Art History master’s graduate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and current registrar at an art conservation company. Her work is published or forthcoming in JAKE, Overheard Magazine, God’s Cruel Joke, Polyester Zine, and others. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and tends to focus on relationships and patriarchy. She writes poetry because she doesn’t know what else to do with herself.

Image: reddit.com

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