Category: The Future

John-Michael Bloomquist: Three Father Nescio Poems from The Future

Father Nescio and the Ark of the Future The lift was a mile-long throat up to the scorched surface of the Earth. The phlegm-yellow sky hacked thunder and spat lightning around the Ark— a shimmering peanut of mercury larger than the New York skyline sitting in the vaporized seabed— a coral graveyard bleached like an albino…
“Dad’s House,” a short story from The Future by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

I go to the café with my machine, but I’m followed by a smell. No one else around seems to be bothered by it, and though it’s intense, acrid, sour, like my dad’s dirty toothbrush (how could he have kissed our mother after shoving that thing in his mouth?), I make myself get used to…
Six Micros from The Future: Matt Leibel

Out of Office Jeff wrote an out-of-office email: “Off to the future, back Wednesday the 21st.” Of course, in the future, he didn’t have this job—no one had jobs. Everything was automated and people just sat around thinking, dreaming, playing videogames. He liked this, so he never returned, never invented the systems that made this…
The Employees, a workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, reviewed by Titus Chalk

Powerful men like to send things into space. Perhaps the darkness between the stars is the proximity to godliness they seek. Perhaps they want simply to untether themselves from Earth and its trifling concerns like workers’ rights. There is something of both these ideas in Olga Ravn’s latest novel, published in Danish in 2018, before…
The Future: “In Another Lifetime,” from a crown of sonnets by Tomas Nieto

In a basement in what was known as Seattle, a watchmakersolders a metal wing onto a robot bird, springing it to lifewith the weight of gear as engine—motion as ignition. Thisis the closest thing to impulse without nerve, thrill, or grief.In another lifetime, fortune tellers read love linesthrough circuits and wires, speaking wonders from matrix,destiny…
From “devours itself”: a mixed media collaboration for The Future by Alexandra Mattraw & Adam Thorman

*Ed.’s Note: click on image to view larger size. The Image Devours Itself 1 Adam Thorman If only my mouth it is that I will turn, seaward. Glow the apple in your phone we stand cliffside. Click pictures : Blue lace borders what isn’t. Cyclone, chain, center beach caving. Unseen I in the dream you…
Two Poems from The Future: Jessica Morey-Collins

The Day We Learned Most of us immediately pulled off our shoes and popped our shirt-buttons, released the thunder of our hearts to quarrel with the administration. The teenagers who found it had been up to teenage no-good—pushing each other in a stolen shopping cart, gulping begged beer and whooping through the sidewalked night. They…
Three Poems from The Future: Caely McHale

Mona Lisa My hands are the last human thing about me.I keep my fingernails pink.I arrange them soft like the Mona Lisa. I imagine delivering a baby, scaled and cold.Scoop the mucus from his throat!My hands are the last human thing about me. My brother’s hands have gone to shit,Dark and spotted from a magnified…
Two Poems from The Future: Oak Morse

DaBaby, the 49th President Lime Lamborghinis for college grads Diamond grillz for senior citizens Extra! Extra! Read all about it A Nigga in da House, No Cap Strippers hanging from the chandelier Pool with ocean water from Bahamas Slogan: Make jokes. No stress. Love. Live Life. Breaking…