ODE TO PROGRESS

by Tim Walker

Where are the mayflies of years past?
Or their descendants for that matter,
missed for many a May? But hey, at least
our windshield’s free of bug splatter.

Are night-blooming plants bereft of pollination
by moths confused by light pollution?
Praise be to LED lights, so productive,
we splurge on ever greater wattage!

And how does the little busy bee
keep up morale in its collapsing colony?
Being a social insect is overrated, vastly,
like being a seed-dispersing beasty.

The plants will learn to do without them.
We’re all tightening our belts. In the long run
we’ll concoct “honey” from sorghum
and petroleum byproducts, Amen.

Tim Walker read, for pleasure, the complete novels of Charles Dickens while earning a BA in Environmental Studies, and the complete novels of Anthony Trollope while earning a PhD in Geological Sciences, and has worked as a computer programmer, healthcare data analyst, used book seller, and pet sitter. He lives largely in his own head, while he corporeally resides in Santa Barbara with his son Dana and their cat Cassiopeia. His essays and poems most recently appeared in Harpy Hybrid Review, 3:AM, Fatal Flaw, Rock Salt Journal, and are forthcoming in Sneaker Wave Magazine and TYPO: The International Journal of Prototypes.

TRIOLET ON A CADENCE FROM ELIZABETH BISHOP

by A. E. Stallings

Arugga AI has created Polly, the first AI-powered pollination robot. It can recognize 97% of all plant specimens.

We’d rather have the robot than the bee 

Although it meant the end of honey 

And honey’s aureate anthology. 

We’d rather have the robot than the bee. 

Greenhouses, hushed, far as the eye can see:

No buzz sweeter than money! 

We’d rather have the robot than the bee, 

Although it meant the end of honey. 

A.E. Stallings is an American-born poet and translator who lives in Greece. Her most recent volume, Like, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A selected poems, This Afterlife, is forthcoming in December from FSG in the US and Carcanet in the UK.