“Future Theory,” by Andrew Hemmert, appears in the Winter 2019 Issue of MQR.
Now let’s all take a deep breath and start over.
Hello, my name is mostly water.
My name is I have never known a world
other than this one. You too? Maybe
you are also dismayed by our inability
to quickly travel into space and were hoping
by the time you grew up there would be
something resembling a bullet train to the moon
or even Mars. In the Fifties, they seemed so sure
of the future’s brightness, which may have been
a side effect of having stared directly at the blast
of the atomic bomb and believing perhaps foolishly
but understandably that things could not
get worse and so had to get better.
It never works that way, does it?
My parents are hunkered down in Florida
waiting for the latest hurricane
to do whatever it is going to do
and there’s another hurricane queued up
behind it. You can believe that because you’re alive
and living is a procession of letdowns punctuated
hopefully by pinnacles of good feeling. It never works
that way, does it? Still, the water in your hands
is the water in my hands is the water
saw-blading its way up the coast.
Give me a hand with this thing we call the future.
Purchase MQR 57:5 or consider a one-year subscription to read more. This poem appears in the Winter 2019 Issue of MQR.
