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.

O GREENLAND! MY GREENLAND!

by Anne Gruner

Global AI race makes Greenland's critical minerals a tempting target —NBC News, January 17, 2026

Frozen for millennia,

your ice melts faster and faster,

the shiny shield that protects you

from the sun, reflecting its rays,

like armor deflecting spears, arrows,

and swords but not outrageous fortune.

 

Invulnerable for ages, your permafrost

softens, disgorging its methane and carbon

to fuel the global bonfire of the vanities.

Ancient microbes, freed from glacial captivity

create black holes of “giant” viruses,

standing ready for missions of good or evil.

Fresh and cold, your newly born meltwater

floods the warm salty ocean,

and like a hormonal imbalance,

it slows the sea's circulation,

a fateful harbinger.

 

As your ice bids its long farewell,

you say hello to a new peril,

one from humanity, which may transmogrify

your beauty into toxic mountains of sludge, acid,

dust, and runoff from crushing, grinding,

and chemical bleaching for coveted minerals

and a cesspool of data centers, accelerating

your blackening, melting, warming,

and death. 

 

For the first time in human memory

you have shed tears on your highest peak,

weeping for the Earth.

Anne Gruner is a two-time Pushcart nominee whose poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line publications including Amsterdam Quarterly Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Honeyguide Literary Magazine, The New Verse News, Humans of the World, Spillwords, and Written Tales. Her fiction and non-fiction can be found in Dogwood, Rhapsody of the Spheres, Persimmon Tree, Constellations, Hippocampus, and others. A former CIA analyst, Anne lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband and two golden retrievers.

A TrOcitieZ

by Abby Caplin

AI slips into my personal emails, a spying  
Big Brother, peering over my shoulder. Last fall, money
circled  
down the drain, in what might be our last election.
Eight years, I guzzled the news. Now I sip and worry how “Dt” might get 
flagged by Em’s tentacles, if not weirdly written. 
Google renames the Gulph.of.MeXicoh to the Gulph.of.AmeRikaH, our maps  
hijacked by data centers in Dallas. Institutions, 
international alliances, even lowly pennies have not been spared. My neighbor 
Jenna, a vibrant woman with twin two-year-olds, was laid off last Friday by Dt/Em’s  
kangaroo government. AI sums up what’s inside my email: 
Letter of Rejection from The New Yorker; Ruth had surgery; Abby offers advice on 
medications. My mother always told me to   
never underestimate the stupidity of the American people. 
Oh, how she was right! I rewatch 
Pride and Prejudice where a wealthy man learns from a strong female lead, so 
quaint, and You’ve Got Mail, where a 
revenue-oriented man’s heart is softened by a trusting,
spirited woman, but not enough to not destroy her livelihood.  
Tr 
Ump will someday be laid out, like Savonarola, upon his bonfire of the 
vanities. But for now, I should watch 
what I write, for the mighty egos, 
extracted from the ashes of the Third Reich, are celebrating their carnage,  
yucking it up in private jets. Congratulations, Na 
Zis, though you too will fail. 


Abby Caplin's poems have appeared in AGNI, Moon City Review, Mudlark Flash, Pennsylvania English, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. Among her awards, she has been a finalist for the Rash Award in Poetry, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, and a nominee for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. She is the author of A Doctor Only Pretends: poems about illness, death, and in-between (2022). Abby is a physician in San Francisco, California.

AI SHANTY

by Joel Glover

LA Wildfires and AI’s Data Center Water Drain: The explosion of data center demand for AI use is draining water resources. Even with efforts to mitigate cooling demands, municipalities and companies struggle to find a balance. —Information Week, January 17, 2025. 

[Refrain]

Oh, the sea was wide, the sun is high

The land is parched, the soil is dry

And clouds swirl over cooling stacks

And soothing rain is what we lack

[Verse 1]

There’s vapour in the atmosphere

And bubbles form, that much is clear

Pyramids and Ponzi schemes

Built on algorithmic dreams

[Refrain]

Oh, the sea was wide, the sun is high

The land is parched, the soil is dry

And clouds swirl over cooling stacks

And the cooling rain is what we lack

[Verse 2]

Profits for some, for us the loss

Ice caps melted, no more frost

Towns in rolling blackout pall

No showers, storms, or thunder squall

[Refrain]

Oh, the sea was wide, the sun is high

The land is parched, the soil is dry

And clouds swirl over cooling stacks

And the cooling rain is what we lack

Former waiter in a Love Boat themed restaurant, reformed mandarin, and extroverted accountant, Joel Glover lives in the woods of Hertfordshire with two boys, one wife, and not nearly enough coffee. His poetry has appeared in oddball magazine, Little Old Lady Comedy, Radon Journal, 5-7-5 Journal, Epistemic Literary, Pulp Lit Mag, and As It Ought To Be. He published a chapbook Untimely Poetry, taking a cockeyed view at the news of 2024.