Exchanging Air with Glass

--a message in a bottle--

​

​

​

"We looked inside. Then we'd rubbed our eyes, to make sure—after all, what we saw

was absolutely, definitely, a city, —tiny, but humming with wild mechanical energy.

​

There were suspension bridges. Monolithic towers. Even such structures as unlike in any of our own,

ever before, but—there they were, inside the bottle. In the dark, the bottle lit up, like sleepless Gotham."

​

​

​

The snow is gray today. The water has things growing in it. Green, thick at the bottom of it.

 

Something is wrong. It started happening before anyone realized.—

​

Babies started wearing facepaint. Santa started showing up late on Christmas, naked.

​

 

It's like the whole world's gone to war, and all the women can think about are the uniforms.

​

​

Hey, Bobby, you hear 'bout that virus thing goin' around, some endless food supply...

​

That's right, Dylan. Heard they is doin' it to 'em chickens, now? Four legs instead of two?

​

Less wing, more meat, Bobby.

​

That's right Dylan, that's right.

​

​

Then they hooked our zombie chickens up to VR.

​

You know—for the fresh, open pastures we've denied ourselves.

​

​

​

When did it start?

 

I guess it started with the crayons:

​

​

PARLIAMENT BLACK

COCAINE WHITE

MORNING-AFTER RED

INDUSTRIAL GREEN

RADIATION YELLOW

INTERSEXUAL PINK

​

​

BLUE ?

 

 

—No, not after our floating islands of plastic turned carnivorous.

​

There was that climate change—a record-breaking forty days of earthquakes.

​

A hundred forty degrees in August.

 

Minus twenty-five late December, —Sao Paulo, Brazil.

​

Trees started exploding.

 

Then in winter even the polar bears learned how to knit.

​

​

They built a glass dome over our heads, when they found out the rain was mutating our crops. 

​

The entrepreneurial among us decided to sell pebbles and bottles as "Earth" and "Atmosphere."

​

But it was no longer economically viable to produce snow for Christmas, they said.

​

Saint Patrick's Day was more profitable. Plus the Jews wanted Christmas for themselves.

​

Santa was so upset he shipped all his elves back to Mexico.

​

​

Luckily the Feds had a surplus of over twenty-two million pounds of cheese saved up, for emergencies.

 

Luckily the lobbyists successfully identified cheese as a healthy alternative to red meat ("which causes cancer!")—

​

luckily cheese is an indispensable part of a balanced breakfast, including Bloody-Mary's and a subscription to Netflix.

 

​

And, of course, the chickens.

​

Stop re-spawning! scream the farmers.

 

This is madness!

​

​

Or maybe it was when government hired professional meditators to wage war with each other;

​

thought-missiles flying all around, someone was bound to get hurt.

​

Scattered are the carcasses of whales and giant squids on our shores,

 

looking like the arms and legs of some god, first shocking shades of

 

radiation yellow and shocking purple, then stripped bare by the islands, now just moldy green...

 

"Water"

​

​​

​​​​

​

When government failed, market interests took up weather-control—

​

​

Just a juvenile cry for attention, they said.

​

​

But I think Santa's got the right idea.

​

Some of us have got the right idea.

​

Like that radiation cat, that escaped—

​

Building some sort of spaceship to the moon.

​

What, you haven't heard? It's all over the Facebook feeds.

​

​

Hang on, here it is again—

​

​

​

​

 

​