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.

STRIKETOBER

by Tom Bauer

William Blake (1757–1827) “Behemoth and Leviathan.” Pen and black ink, gray wash, and watercolor, over traces of graphite. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1903. The Morgan Library & Museum.

New ‘Striketober’ looms as US walkouts increase amid surge in union activity. Support for unions is on the rise as workers take action to raise pay and conditions amid booming company profits. —The Guardian, September 26, 2022

Was that ever a thing in ancient times?

Did it happen building the pyramids?

Those workers weren’t slaves but they didn’t get much.

When did unions really begin? When did

inequities of behemoths begin?

Perhaps it is a species thing. Feels old.

The feeling of, the shape of, a company,

is an old shape dragging a trench across time.

This rough beast shapes us with an owning force,

a power center employing thousands, making

us swarm to assigned tasks for minimal pay

and no share in the gains made by the few.

This behemoth of shape, this company, looming

block with a whip in hand, stands over us still.

Tom Bauer's an old coot who lives in Montreal and plays a lot of board games.

JOSEPH'S GRAIN PYRAMID

by Alejandro Escudé

Cartoon by Bob Englehart, Hartford Courant, October 6, 2015

Stacked full, the loincloth peasants hoisting baskets
up the winding ramp to protect the world from

famine—a wide smile on the giddy prophet’s face,
a full moon like a Greek shield and Christ himself

cradling the planet: power gives to power, the surgeon
holding a scalpel like the reed of a scribe writes

the corporation of God on our minds, you may
renounce judgement, you may let the doubts go,

have faith only in him who knows the truth
and believes mightily enough to forgo knowledge.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

WALLENDA

by Joan Colby

Discovery has set November 2 for Nik Wallenda’s Chicago skyscraper tightrope walk. Using dozens of cameras positioned across the city and on helicopters, Discovery will follow Wallenda’s attempted two-part walk, without net or harness, at night, in one of the windiest sections of Chicago. For the first part of the crossing, Wallenda will walk about two city blocks – uphill rising to a 15-degree angle – from the iconic Marina City’s west tower to the Leo Burnett Building at more than 50 stories above the Chicago River. It will be the highest skyscraper walk in the history of the “Flying Wallenda” family and the first time Nik has attempted a tightrope walk at such a steep angle. The second part of the walk will span from the Marina City’s west tower to the east tower. --Deadline Hollywood, September 16, 2014






The windy city in blustery November
Is what he’s chosen, desiring like Houdini,
The drama of the unattainable.

Cables strung between Marina Towers,
Two wedding cakes of glass and steel.
Difficult placement for right angled

Dwellers, but he’s struck with the motif:
Midwestern schmaltz inviting round beds
Reminiscent of the center ring

Where his forefathers erected human pyramids
In vaulted air and learned the sentence
Of failure could be irrevocable.

A triple feat is what he’s devised,
Another wire stretched across the river
To a skyscraper square as the equation

He plans to solve. Famous as a wind-tunnel,
This route will test the nerve
Of trembling watchers

Whose challenge
Like his, is what
In the world they long for.

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.