We Work!

Loudspeakers announce dawn.
Each barrack offers one
climate sacrifice, a death
to offset emissions. Someone,
somewhere, tots up how many
needed per day. Those remaining
work, “All that I am for all we can be”
our credo, the crescendo of each tune
on Office-Spotify, the worker of the month
a live-streamed god of motivation.
Our children grow in Kinder-Halls
to maximize efficiency. They also labor—
swings and merry-go-round, even fidget spinners,
feeding the grid. Evenings, old and young
get thirty minutes of Nature-Time,
Oculus Rift niching creatures of choice,
realer than real. Hooked into sleep-suits,
even our tossing and turning transmutes
into Joules, a whirl of counters
to fend off extinction.

Read this poem on Apple News.

Cover photo by Martino Pietropoli.