TRADE

by Zumwalt

President Trump on Monday lashed out at communities that are protesting data centers, suggesting that residents who do not go along with the artificial intelligence revolution must prefer to be “backwards and poor.” —The New York Times, August 31, 2026

It’s a fair trade.

Water for compute.

Convert all the reservoirs.

Pump the aquifers to cool the language models.

Water for compute.

It’s a fair trade.

Energy for the processing.

Switch the substations to priority routing.

Make the desert a giant server farm.

Energy for the processing.

Prices are right for data and power.

Step up production:

More servers, more carbon in the air;

More processing, less rivers, more exhaust in our lungs.

Rising global temperatures are ripe to drive up prices.

Droughts increase water’s premium.

Aquifers get depleted.

Power becomes even scarcer.

Cooling costs rise.

Little Johnny wants to make money.

How can he not help to do so?

Invest in AI and pollute at the same time.

Easy money.

Pollute on a small scale:

Pocket change.

Pollute on a large scale:

Wealth beyond dreams.

Rising Temperatures,

Erratic Weather,

Algorithmic Growth,

Scarce Water Resources,

Civil Unrest

All put stress on

Grid supplies.

Now Johnny has to work harder.

He burns the midnight coal.

And makes more money.

Data centers, crypto mines and gigawatts

Make deserts out of wetlands.

Cooling fans, diesel backups and transformers

Make hazardous waste the specialty in trade.

But it’s a fair trade.

Quality of Life for Velocity of Life.

It’s a reasonable trade.

More processing for less plants and animals.

We will switch the future for the present.

Make our dreams a giant dustbowl.

Swap future prospects for a generated prompt.

Principles are right for the harvesting.

Let’s step up consumption:

More compute, more poison, hotter temperatures;

More processing, less rivers, less need for people.

It’s a good, honest trade.

I can write away the guilt.

Post my outrage to a monetized feed

And feel just a little better

As everyone increasingly feels worse.

Zumwalt’s poetry examines the intersection of identity, instability, and the mechanics of perception. Zumwalt is a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News.

THE OILIGARCHS

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

We are living in deadly heat

We are living in a climate inferno

Growing in intensity season by season

We are living in fire

We are living in weather conditions

Created by avarice and greed

Created by the princes of petroleum

The captains of capital

We are witnessing temperatures soar

We are witnessing our fellow humans

Particularly the most vulnerable

Expire of the extreme heat –

People living on the streets

With nowhere to escape the sun

Elders with weakened immune systems

Infants whose little bodies cannot cope

The weather today:

110 degrees in Phoenix, 107 in Grand Junction

105 in Tulsa, 101 in Casper,

No relief in sight

When I was a young boy

We lived near a greenhouse

Where the neighborhood kids sometimes gathered

On sub-zero winter days

The embracing warmth

The rich, organic stink of humus

And manure and decomposing straw,

The summer-in-winter just next door

We knew why the heat couldn’t escape

Up through those hundreds of glass panes

We learned it in sixth-grade science:

The greenhouse effect

An exquisitely balanced system

That lets just the right amount of heat out

That keeps just the right amount of heat in

That makes life on earth possible

Now carbon emissions have thickened the glass

To trap more heat

To skew the ancient equilibrium

To weaponize the weather

We have protested outside office buildings

We have blockaded refinery entrances

We have ranted and chanted and invoked the future

To change the hearts and minds of the oiligarchs 

To remind them of sixth-grade science 

To remind them of the delicate balance

To demand that they cease and desist

But they won’t stop, won’t stop, won’t… stop…

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s latest book is And What Will We Sing? (Kelsay Books). He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives with his wife Cynthia in northern California.

PONT DES ARTS, 2015

by Scot Ehrhardt

Photograph: Remy de la Mauviniere/AP via The Guardian

The city had warned us
about the weight of promises:
the civil engineers, our parents,
one parapet of the Pont des Arts
predicted this would happen.
Five ounces for two lives
padlocked to padlocks
an exponential mass
on an iron grill,

and when forever
proved temporary, no one
returned for the divorce.
No one dredged the Seine,
a bed of discarded keys,
for the one they jettisoned
the summer their lives
brimmed with youth.

Let us dismantle this
monument of hope,
scatter and melt the
seven hundred thousand
moments we dismissed
the weight of a symbol,
when we thought
that steel could represent        

the fickle carbon of our hearts.


Scot Ehrhardt is a teacher and writer from Baltimore, MD. He has appeared in Little Patuxent Review, Lines + Stars, Tidal Basin Review, and Infinity's Kitchen. His first book of poetry One Of Us Is Real is currently looking for a home.