Category: The Future

Posing utopic, apocalyptic, dystopic, or superhero solutions to “The Future.” Writers depict futuristic alternative worlds in politics, environment, gender, religion, sexuality, or ethnography.

Poetry from the Future: “A Wave” by Jared Sagar

Sometimes a whole year slips by. Verity said the Inuit died as ice closed around their meat-holes. There is always skin, skin on ruins, trawls in chlorine. I wave moronically at widow peaks, a window’s orange fire, at bone receding cringe, pink telluric kids inspecting jetsam in the illusional pool. My reptilian friend, welcome, can…
The Future Has Poetry: Three from Arcanum by Daniel Beauregard

a drunkeneye roamsthe hearthwherean idiotsitslike a fishout of water the fire is unlitand the idiot is cold what an idiot! * down by Frog Lakethere’s an old stonethat looks like acat’s head a deflated balloondecrescendo out oftime with raven’shair the bubbles go downby Cat’s Head Lakelooking for valveswith which tospeak a moderate shift insediment yields…
Poetry from the Future: “Landlords” by Grace Lynn

Here’s how you inherit the future. You stand here searching for lost parts but only find people rehearsing gravity. They make syllables of promise then rise into air. They are pretty & distant & will remain this way. Will let you down but never remember. If speech heals silence, it’s only in your head. Only…
Fiction from the Future: “The Passenger” by Michael Sheehan

Caleb came at his appointed time but was surprised there was a line, there was a crowd, a disentangling order of people pressing toward the barrier. Stupidly he’d thought the offworld opportunity, now that it had finally come, would be something cleaner: he’d show at his time, be screened, show his repopulation report and pass,…
Poetry from the Future: “Beads of Time” by Dmitry Blizniuk (Translated by Sergey Gerasimov)

It’s getting dark, slantwise, just a notch from eternity.The ballerina of reverietakes slowly offher pointes of silence.Left … now the right one … A long sigh … A fence; birds made of twisted iron hungrily peck the rust. A black cat glides along the façade.The radiant rapiers of electric light are trembling;the streetlights in fencer’s masks(the left hand…
The Future Has Poetry: “Water Tastes Like Metal” by David Anson Lee

The tap tastes like the factory that promised a hundred jobsand delivered a century of residue.We boil and filter and boil againuntil only the sediment remembers the river. My neighbor grows potatoes in a tub because the soil refused apologies.His hands are callused maps of a season gone wrong.Children rinse candy in bottled water and…
Fiction Review: Emily Hall Reads Kristina Ten’s Debut Collection Tell Me Yours, I’ll Tell You Mine

Kristina Ten’s debut short-story collection, Tell Me Yours, I’ll Tell You Mine, is filled with female protagonists who refuse to acquiesce. Delightfully defiant, and reminiscent of Dahlia de la Cerda’s riotous Reservoir Bitches, Ten’s characters shrug off taboos and aren’t afraid of using violence to ensure their autonomy. Across the twelve stories in Tell Me…
The Future Has Poetry: “Tuesdays”‘ by R.C. Blenis

The boot descends. The wet thudof sole on skin, the small suckof leather peeling from flesh;the metronome of Mondays.Air squeezed sideways through a mouththat used to make music. The wheeze,the wet whistle, the catch between blows,pressure pressing into softness, the bodybeaten to a beat, a blood-beat drumming downto this dumb thud, this pulp, this pulse.This.…
Poetry from the Future: “salamander exfil” by Dennis Hinrichsen

slept in the hostilewoke in the hostile buffalo nickel on a hard rail glooming more and morethe gesture jackals behind every door midnight moonlight with too much metal in it when will it be cowboy again? lariats of oxygenand a straight shot wordwordwordnot this crawl space antler cowering I am myself as potent as a…