Tomorrow: is hostile. The cacti are evolving. What was once matte rubber is now charred flesh. Their long spines bend and twist into painful shapes: fingers sprouting like pin cushions. The last coyotes circle and salivate, but, like me, are too afraid to attack. For hours I watch. The hasty sketches never move. I remind myself again and again, “The cacti are not alive like I am alive.” I crawl on my belly until I am close enough to strike; my hand reaches into the pocket of my worn, impractical twenty first century denim and pulls out a knife. Careful, not to make any sudden movements I rest the blade against the cactus’ thick skin. Beads of sweat fall and drip. The knife slips and I swear I see pink. My heart beat quickens. The fear it will awake is too great. The coyotes and I leave hungry.
Ely Thompson

Memory: fuzzy people that fit neatly in small compartments.

I walk along gravel rivers in search of salvation. Empty house after empty house first barricaded, and now dilapidated. The ones that left, took the time to board up cracked windows and fill porcelain tubs with wet cement. It’s been hard for a while now. They didn’t want the folks remaining to use their toilets or wear their dirty underwear. An abandoned house is a black hole; there is no telling how deep the basements go. Sometimes removing floor boards reveals whole rooms that contain only a single mattress. I make my judgements, but then, put things as they were and turn my back to them. I have inklings about whether or not a building will be a productive excavation based solely on external irregularities. Once a Rolling Stones’ poster plastered to a garage door lead me to a Botticelli. The painting was of an apathetic trio: one woman, draped in royal medieval purple, holds a sword in one hand and in the other an olive branch. A drab maid follows close behind and upon her head is the flesh surrounded skull of an elderly man, wrapped in swaddling cloth. His skin as gray and rippled as an overcast day. None of them bother to even attempt a smile: documentation of the end of the beginning. I take the painting back to my home. In my damp living room, I use an old tube of my wife’s lipstick to draw cartoonish smiles on their dismal faces. When I’m finished, I carry the paintings out to the desert and set it next to other found objects that I have fixed. I lay the image in the sand so it faces the sky and I scream:

“We always appreciated what we were given!” The satellites can see me. I know they can.

At another juncture, I accidentally enter a library. A large owl, perched on the building’s exposed and brittle rafters, winks at me and I know the getting is going to be good. The doors are locked with a rusted padlock put it opens with a gentle tug. Afraid of everything, I don’t want to enter the dark porthole, but I hold my breath and for the third time today, I risk it all. The inside smells of cigarettes, moss, and a sinister amount of talcum powder. The rows of books appear to be relatively intact, except for the skeleton of a palm tree, which, has come through the ceiling and taken out M through O; giving the room a flash light worth of light. Beyond the tree, there is an elderly woman sitting quietly at the circulation desk. Her face is cracked and squashed like a toad’s. Only a few gray hairs remain on her head, and she is missing buttons all over the place. Minding her own business. Writing a note. Pretending not to see me. I rely on stereotypes (still) and yell:

“Are you the librarian?” She hastily finishes her note, neatly folds it, and puts it in an unmarked envelope. She looks up and straightens her sweater.

“I have taken that role for myself.”

“Do you have a degree in library science?”

“I have degrees.”

“Would you like a drink?”

“I’m writing a book, when it is finished, I would like it to be placed prominently in your library.”

“Has it been published?”


“No.”

“I could have recommended a friend, but right now, she’s traveling to peninsular Florida by burro train.”

“I’ll take that drink.” She reaches below her desk and pulls out two shot glasses and a bottle of tequila. Her name is Francis.

“Where did you get the tequila?”

“I’ve been saving it. You’re the first person that has been here since all those quitters left. How about a mystery?”

“Let me take a look around.”

“Suit yourself.” Francis pulls out three more shot glasses, I watch, as she drizzles the Tequila across the table.

Libraries have always been autistic places. Opening book after book, I am taken over with embarrassment at all of our missteps. I use my black markers and spend hours making things appear balanced, climatic, and righteous. Francis doesn’t seem to mind; she is asleep from too much tequila. I find a biography of the Native American military leader Geronimo and I give myself permission to darken sections and footnotes concerning his capture and the years he is caged like an animal and forced to tour with a traveling circus. The last chapter, which gives the explicit details of his grave robbing by a group of privileged and comedically challenged Yale undergraduates, I tear out all together. I hastily use my last glue stick to insert new hand written pages documenting Geronimo’s life as a business man on Wall Street. In graphic detail, I reveal that upon escaping from the circus Geronimo stabs John D. Rockefeller and leaves him to drown in his own deep blood. After, Geronimo collects millions and millions of dollars in cash from a basement vault, he charters a hot air balloon, and sprinkled the fortune over New York City. He goes on to govern the states of Idaho, California, and North Dakota. Geronimo dies at the ripe old age of one-hundred, at his home in Colorado, with his grandchildren. Miraculously, he experiences no pain. Now, we commemorate his birth by way of National Holiday on April 14th.

“Where’s your wife?” Francis, the librarian, has come to and is pointing to my wedding ring. I raise my hand and looked to the crumbling ceiling. She nods and throws back another shot.

Limitations: An annoying itch, a tsunami.

Neither my wife nor I know why we choose to sleep under the bed at night. Now that the human experience is getting rough, we’re suppose to sleep in the bathtub, but it’s full of mildew and I lost my last scrubby brush. I also have a phobia that involves loose hairs touching my skin. When the bombs explode, I shake her. She tells me to knock it off, but I’m afraid the sudden noise will stop her heart and I want to jostle it. Remind it that we survived again. It is still red, beating, and employed full-time.

The ones in tweed coats, leather patches, and complicated, pretentious ideas are disappearing. That isn’t random. At night my neighbors rebel, large fires burn where my dog likes to play. Their existences were not supposed to be so temporal, and they feel betrayed by God and Science, both of whom had made lofty promises. We drink wine with copies of Little House on the Prairie and The Leaves of Grass duck taped to our bellies, amazon.com doesn’t work anymore and it’s possible tonight’s the night when the lights go out. If there is anything fun about what is going on it’s that our actions might finally be contributing to the greater good: legacy. Yesterday, I swallowed a flash drive with Shakespeare’s collected works on it.

It’s important to channel frustration. During the day, my wife assists me on a book of my own I’m compiling. Chapter one consist of letters we write to future generations. Those kids are going to want to know why they don’t have a pot to piss in. She and I feel personally responsible. We remind them that we honestly thought the earth was deeper, and though, we admit to having millions of pictures from space that proved the bottom was quite real; its hard to take that into consideration when you’re just one person. It will be important to remind them that we were told the world would end with a bang, and not a balled up sock pushed deep into our throats. Not knowing you, tykes of the twenty second century, on a personal level, your livelihood did not appear to be directly related to my purchase of a whirlpool bathtub. The television was always mouthing off about hydrofuel and the second coming. At the time, conservation seemed like a real waste—of time. Especially since I was brought up to believe I was insignificant. It’s no accident I have a bachelor’s degree in Human Resources. I promise it doesn’t mean what you think. When I look out the window, the horizon I see is barely even Las Vegas. Beyond that, it goes on for thousands and thousands of miles, and I find it impossible, at any one moment in time, to account for it all. Whenever I try, I sweat, and then instinctually I have to take a shower. I’m sorry if you don’t know what that means.

In many of my letters, I like to remind these, our raggedy children of tomorrow, that

“…in the capitalistic society that we lived in, gasoline was a commodity, and water wasn’t even a commodity and commodities are by definition—well according to Wikipedia—some good for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. It is a product that is the same no matter who produces it, be it petroleum, notebook paper, or milk. In other words, copper is copper. The price of copper is universal and fluctuates daily based on global supply and demand. Staplers, on the other hand, have many levels of quality. And, the better a stapler is [perceived to be], the more it will cost. So yes, mistakes were made. Gasoline and copper should have been called Gods and not commodities. Water should have been called a word we never took the time to come up with. I bet you’re up to your ears in staplers—I know I am.”

There are incidences I refuse to put into writing because I can only imagine our offspring reading these confessionals huddled around campfires in the middle of winter, dressed like sad clowns, in worn impractical designer clothes from generations before. It makes me feel guilty and I hate feeling guilty. I don’t want to tell them that much of this dilemma is on my shoulders. When industry began to scrape the bottom: people got antsy. They manufactured homemade guns, strapped hubcaps to their chests, and crossed the borders in the thousands. I poked my head up from the bottom of my third story window to watch. The mobs would hold their empty paint buckets out at arms length and insist on being assisted. The first time I saw murder I literally soiled myself. Reeking of urine, I wept over the dead body for an hour. Blood spongy and sticky on my hands. It was a hairy gas station attendant named Ron. His wallet was brown and cheap. I pulled at the velcro and found only loose change. Devastated for him and curious for me, I dug deeper, a crevice, where money was supposed to be. I found photos of his wife and three kids, all arranged by age in clothing that suggested a sincere struggle. I drove to my home and turned the water on. My wife said something predictable like, “Hey, we need that. Unable to speak, I wildly shook my head and showed her the photos of Ron’s kids. She acknowledged that they looked disheveled, but tried to stop me as I began compulsively flushing my own toilet. I lit my stove and let it burn all afternoon. Foolishly, I used my own last tank of gas to drive to a secluded gas station. I wrapped red handkerchiefs tightly around the handles of the pumps. The always faithful gas station attendant, Kevin, inquired about what I was doing:

“I reckon, you’ll have to pay for this mess.”

I told him about Ron and Ron’s children, but Kevin did not care. He was amiable, yet unconcerned about the people who would die in the struggle to zero. I lit a match and dropped it into the pool of gasoline that surrounded my feet. Engulfed in flames, I ran to the brush and rolled fervantly. I drove away with my windows down and the air turned way up: Kevin and Ron hanging recklessly out of the truck of my car. Cringing at every turn, I made it home. I buried both of them in my neighbor Irene’s garden. I had it stuck in my head that they would become food, and their deaths would not be in vain, but it didn’t take long for it all to turn into a pungent mess—nothing is going to grow there for a long time. In the moment, it was clear to me that we should cut the itch off and get on with it. I had a pop up tent and a book about the history of boy-scouts.
Much later, when the resources were gone, and I had a minute or two to give the book a closer inspection, it was apparently more of a biography of the original founders than the instructional guide for building fires and tying knots that I had hoped. My point being: It hasn’t been a cake walk for me either. I’m sorry. I have no idea what your life is like. My hope is that you want one.

Love: A rich food, for only the richest people. see dignity.

I first read that scientists were terraforming an unoccupied planet while reading the back of a cereal box. This planet’s cheap land and green grass revealed themselves to me through a color by number. A microscope with eyes and a mouth pointed to where my parents, my dog, and I would live when the gasoline was all gone. This was years ago, and now that I’ve had to time to think, it’s obvious I shouldn’t have laughed so hard or said things like, what a pompous idea, our hands and our brains are too tiny to make an impact like that. My neighbor, Peter, is a politician and I always pester him for his ideas,

“Peter, are we doomed?” I asked, hesitantly.

“No, quite the opposite. Unless, by ‘we,’ you are referring to the individual—are you?

“Well, yes and no?”

“Ely, no one—nothing—can stop humanity from spiraling out into the universe, farther and farther, until the end of time. You, unfortunately will not fend so well.”

“I want to believe that.” I do want to believe him..

He pats me on the back as I nervously cross my arms and nod. Then, he tightens his bathrobe, grabs his mail, and returns to his impressive home. I shouldn’t wait for him in the morning like this, but I’m worried it’s all a giant conspiracy and I want to prepare myself.

The news is useless—the anchor and his bouffant hair wondering out loud, while pointing to misleading infographics, attempting to calculate how many people would be able to go and what it was going to come down to: race or sex or class or hair. I was white, male, middle class and continued to be prejudiced enough to think it would not be random. During press conferences, the President, styled professionally in ivory, would give bombastic speeches about the “selection process” and the “perfect equation of people,” but she was going. The people who flooded the streets with homemade signs and bad attitudes, moaning about why it should be random: well, they got exactly what they asked for.

The papers called this selection process Democracy in Action. The TV guide called it Your Ticket to Paradise. Your Ticket to Paradise, a cheesy game show, broadcasted on every continent decided who would leave Earth and who would stay. My wife and I would watch together in our small apartment with our tickets in hand to remind ourselves of our assigned numbers. A cheap carnival filled with B-list celebrities, paid to spread propaganda, calm the masses, and handout useless prizes like vintage Lamborghinis, which, were the specialty coffins, you and the world had been waiting your whole life for. Numbers, numbers, numbers were all anyone could sustain a conversation about. On the streets, advertisements that resembled indy rock posters promised lush forests, living quarters based on recent science fiction motion pictures, and air that didn’t cause cancer. Steel, to manufacture state of the art tools that would assist in treating the cancer you already have. The copy at the bottom read: Human Proof.

Billions of people tuned in to watch the first episode. I’ll admit the show got better as the season went on. Thousands of numbers slowly scrolling across the screen intermingled with dance numbers, comedy parodies, and a dog who walked around with a briefcase like a person. Eventually, my wife’s number was one of them. I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a smile. I put my head on her shoulder and cried when her mother called to congratulate her; she had been chosen weeks ago. Months later, when they called the last number, I threw up in my living room. My wife sobbed as she scrubbed the carpeting. I sat, comatose, at the kitchen table. The weeks after the last number was called were wet with tears. Tears on the radio. The bus was wet. I learned to bring a napkin to sit on. People asked if there were extras, and I never hesitated to share.

Sex: An emotional problem with a chemical solution.

We argued and wrote down various pros and cons. Post-it notes dotted our apartment. I found new ones all the time. Once, while brushing my teeth, I read the words, “Ben Franklin punished fish for eating animals by eating fish.” I get that it’s a cutthroat world. Needless to say, we were getting off topic.

Wednesday while my wife was at work, I walked around the apartment pulling post-its off the wall, and positioning them in a photo album. I added ones that said, “I love you” and “Never forget the lake house.” We don’t have one, but my plan is I’ll remember it differently. When she came home, I told her, I put them down the garbage disposal. She responded with: “You’ll break it, if you do dumb shit like that.” I nodded. Minutes later, in our small kitchen, under the harsh florescent lights:

“Send in your paperwork and make the decision later. It will be easier to think when there is nothing to think about. You never know, maybe there is a heaven, and if so, I’ll find you. We’ll wear angel wings or become light. Either way our molecules will mix again.” I dried her eyes with a dishtowel. “Maybe someone will pull the wrong lever and you’ll die getting there, and I’ll live for one hundred years, by myself, but breathing. I can live in California if I want to. Sea wind in my thinning hair, that’s something I’ve always wanted. Who loses then?”

She shrugged. She does that when I’m being facetious.

That night we wrapped our naked bodies in down, and I kissed her ingrown toenails and the thick hips she was always attempting to Ellipticycle away, even though I’d asked her not to. I kissed her meaty breasts and coarse hair. I prayed to her nipples that she was joking, would refuse to go, would insist on staying with me and our dog, Trixie. With her feet she clung to my back and thanked me for being upfront with my feelings.

During the day, she thought up reasons why we weren’t meant to be together. At night, during sex, she would sweat and bawl about the injustices of the world. After she would cope by getting into my ears and whispering plans for eternity. “Maybe next time I’ll be a boy and you’ll be a girl,” she’d say. “Trixie will be a baby and everything will be green.” I would close my eyes and pretend not to cry. I don’t believe in God. But I agreed,

“Everything will be green, she smiled and told me,

“You’ll be the last thing I think about in this body. Light years from now and here.”

Apotheosis: A proud and disappointing moment.

The morning she left we tried to recreate an average morning. I told her that was what I would miss the most. Drinking coffee in our bathrobes and having sex in our shower. I remember my breakfast cereal had chocolate in it and I didn’t bother to conserve. I ate my fill. We laid in bed, her head on my lap, her hands nervously kneading my thighs like bread. The doorbell rang twice before either of us moved. Right before she left, I made a mistake. Standing in our doorway I said,

“Don’t go.” Her mom was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. She began shake her head.

“Are you serious?” she said.

I lied. “No, I’m not serious.” I grabbed onto her yellow sweater and clenched my fists. I bit her shoulder and I put my hands around her fragile neck. I repeated, “No, I’m not serious.” Her small hands pulled my cheeks to her mouth and she kissed me; soft at first, but then a deep bite into my lower lip. I pushed her aside. She stumbled, turned, and didn’t look back like they do in the movies and I knew why.

“Hey, I have something for you!”

She paused, confused and irritated.

“Wait a second.” I ran to my bedroom and grabbed the two objects I had meant to give her earlier. I hid them behind my back.

“Pick my left hand if you want to forget. Pick my right hand if you want to remember.”

“I want to forget, but I won’t be able to.” She reached for my left hand and I handed her a kaleidoscope. “It’s beautiful. Thank you. I’ll call it Ely and never forget.” She slipped it into her pocket, clenched her teeth, and went away.

After the door closed, I ran to the window. I used my new telescope to watch her enter the parade of people walking west. Later, I wrote to the children of the future, that she had begged to stay; I had even been forced to barricade the doors and windows. I also mentioned that there was an insurrection involving trees and the humans were being forced to cut them down.

I charged my batteries and prepared a grand meal for Trixie with the last of our perishable food. As the sun went down, I climbed out our bedroom window and onto the fire escape. I made my way to the roof of our building. Large cruise ships filled the sky from horizon to horizon. For months previous, they had hollowed the remaining mountains for iron ore to make the metal giants. They bulldozed and hoarded skyscrapers, railways, and airplanes melting and mixing them into molds. In the last days, hundreds of tank trucks went from gas station to gas station, coast to coast, suckling and swallowing the final drops of dark power. The ships glistened white, some ten and some twenty stories tall. Each ship’s main deck was connected to the ground by eight translucent covered stairways. Through the diaphanous tubes I could see the shadows of the lucky ones climbing to paradise. An exodus, so brilliant, I couldn’t help but applaud our ingenuity.

Government officials erected cement walls to keep the rest out of the way. Snipers poked guns out of deep crenels, and shot anyone making a ruckus, or standing by someone making a ruckus. Smoke began to block my view as the ships broke away from the connecting stairs. A diaspora as big as humanity got smaller and smaller as it got further and further away. The people left behind went for broke: the city was soon ablaze. The only structure strong enough to resist the heat were the stairs to nowhere that now stand, in every town and country, as monuments to our last day together.
When the ships were gone and safe from any harm we on the ground could cause them, the lights were turned off. I sat on the ledge of my building with my feet dangling over the edge and watched as small squares in every direction went dark. At first it was one a second. Then, it was three or four at a time and then, it was me. I pulled a flashlight from my back pocket and crawled back down the fire escape. Trixie was lying on our bed. We slept for a long time.

In meetings held in high school gymnasiums all across the country, the officials were blunt, “You are free to use the nuclear reactors just as soon as you know how to turn them back on.” For a few days, I studied the instructional manuals they passed out at the meeting. In my attic, I rooted out a shovel that looked like it could be used for plutonium enrichment. It did not break when I hit it on things. The small number of people who I was in contact with were afraid of what secrets would be disinterred from digging even a foot underground. They were also skeptical of my enrichment abilities. Instead, they wanted sunshine and anarchy. They burnt the streets, stole all those stereos, poisoned the water with the last bottles of Drano and boxes of Tide. Watching the fish rise to the meniscus of the water with their newfound bloated color guarded scales was more than Trixie and I could handle. They took off for more temperate climates, and I sarcastically waved goodbye as they left. For the first couple of weeks, I scrubbed day and night. I had an economy sized bottle of Pledge, but it was never enough. I kept going back to the store. The doors were torn from their hinges and all the ice cream was gone gone gone.

Before my wife left, I comforted her with thoughts of me getting a deal on a mansion in Beverly Hills. But before I could say, gold rush, the Japanese moved in. I thought I’d go to Japan just to spite someone or something, but from what I hear, a Chinese Realtor has turned the island into the newest eco-tourism destination. A place for anyone who loves rowing boats and fasting. Most days, I think, right here is fine for now. The desert gets a little hot sometimes, but it’s all mine. I never could grow anything but maybe I won’t have to. There could be a cataclysmic event around the corner.

Governmental Body: An external mouth with no external ears.

My friend Chavez used to wash dishes at a casino and now he’s mayor of Boulder City. Chavez’s life will be important to how this time period will be defined by future generations, and I spend time every week interviewing him and writing his biography. He says, “Without the 4clutter of society I can reach my full potential.” We knock back some of the last beers in the world and drink to that. He says, “Finally, no money—no problems.”

This new system doesn’t hassle Chavez like the old one did, and he doesn’t mind being lonely. He wants to learn as much as possible about the history of North America. Maybe create a graph and a timetable that explains how it all came to be in the way that it did. He has big plans to become a scholar. I tell him the textbooks he’s reading are biased, but he insists they were written by a Fortune 500 company. He found an astronomy book and on days like today, he likes to tell me about a mathematician from the seventeenth century who predicted that the universe is littered with black holes.

“They never made it.” Chavez says, “Or they made it somewhere, possibly another dimension, but not paradise. The closest thing to paradise is right here.” He leans back to get a better view of the sky.

“No, they made it—everything they took, all the technology, the Pope, the Vice-President, the piece of the true cross, the Mona Lisa, the Eiffel Tower, the Magna Carta; if it was a risk they would have left us something to honor.”

“Do you want to visit the wax museum again?” Chavez thinks the likenesses are uncanny.

I shake my head and wonder out loud,

“What do wax sculptures say about our place in history?”

“Maybe you’re right. They should be bigger than life like the statue of David. But it’s a Catch-22, Ely. If they hadn’t been made to scale then those scavengers would have taken wax Micheal Jackson and wax Maya Angelou with them. They wouldn’t have given it a second thought.”

Chavez drinks the last swig of his beer and jumps on his bicycle. “I should get back before dark.” Chavez lives alone in Boulder City. He’s afraid that if he is gone for too long someone will take it from him. I live alone, too. Well, except for Francis, but she keeps to herself. If you don’t mind the desert, you can have your own town now. People like it that way. The food will last a while and then the Earth will sigh with relief. The roaches can have it.

Livestock: Beings that would rather be taken advantage of than extinct. See elderly, dogs, hamsters.

I wear a sash all the time now. Not many people see me and the ones that do don’t think I’m putting on airs, or trying to be something I’m not. It’s a gold sash. I found it while I was rifling through an apartment. It used to say, Miss America, but I scribbled that out. The dean of my undergraduate university once said, “Ely, you’ll be an important man, a sash you should wear.” Whenever I hear that word Important that image reverberates in my brain and I can’t help think what was suppose to happen. I have to be physically knocked back into reality.

Towns are filled with important decisions. Chavez and I had an argument about what to do with the animals. He said, “Feed the small ones dog food.” The fresh produce had been eaten and the canned food was a necessity. On our first visit, Chavez had brought his 44 magnum. He told me it had once been owned by Clint Eastwood and that Clint had named her Betty Paige. My mind imagined a lot of inappropriate things. I followed close behind him carrying a large bag of Kibble and Bits.

The main entrance of the zoo was sculpted with ornate gothic animals. The original artist had exaggerated the size and sharpness of the creatures’ cement claws and presumed carious teeth. The screeching and croaking din of hungry, impatient animals was so loud I almost didn’t hear him fire Betty. A brown bear, surrounded by cheap plaster rocks, reared up on his hind legs, exposed his teeth, and then collapsed like a marionette.

Chavez returned Clint’s gun to its holster. “We can’t have bears running around.” Chavez explained that we had to eat every part of the bear. It was the sensible thing to do. We climbed over the low fence and jumped into the pit. With one cut, the bears viscera was on the ground, and its ribs gleamed light. I knelt down and kissed the bear on its forehead. After that, I told Chavez, I would take care of my own zoo. He spit on my shoes and told me I wasn’t prepared for the responsibility.

It was clear to me that I must take every opportunity to restore life to its natural order. I found a bolt cutter in the back of a Home Depot. My method for release could have been more…methodical. It took the cougar five minutes to eat six penguins. They were perplexingly slow. I should have given those penguins a proper head start. Much to my chagrin, the carnivores never seemed to fill. They roamed the streets searching for prey, and in only a few days they began to hunt each other. By the weekend it was just me and Lucy, the lion. Chavez shook his head at all the missed opportunities for Thanksgivings and meat. He told me he was hungry and to shoot it. Francis told me to shoot it, too, but I couldn’t.

Now, at the same time everyday I break open an economy size can of corn beef from Costco for Lucy. Recent events have worn her down. Her hair is mangled, her fur is matted, and her hips protrude sharply; she’s out of shape and slow. I know where she sleeps and every morning, before the sun is up, I ride by her on my bike. I throw the hash and pedal like mad. She always wants more, and I know she wants me. I’ll never kill that lion. Every day that I share food with Lucy is one less day I’ll live, but now I have something to honor, and that keeps me alive.

Friend: Bugs that bring their dead home, so that they can be buried in their own beds.

Large dunes surround my town. I spend my days on the top of the tallest building, an Arby’s, with a pair of binoculars I’ve had since childhood. I’m vigilant about watching Lucy, the lion. If anyone stumbles upon my town, I want to show them some good ol’ American hospitality. A man came by the other day. He must have been fifty or sixty years old. He had a backpack and a sleeping bag strapped to his back. On his shirt he wore an official badge shaped in the form of a star. On his head he wore a cowboy hat. His beard was ratty, and his face was grizzled. I filled my pack with the last few cans of hash in case I ran into Lucy, and went to meet him.

“Good morning, Sheriff?” I said, as he made his way over the thick sand that bleed into the city.

“You don’t have to call me that if you don’t want to. I just wear it to impress the ladies.”

“I sort of do, want to.”

The man tilted his head and read my sash.

“You mayor of this town?”

“Yes, almost two years now. I’d be glad to show you around.”

“You’re the only one living here?”

“Well, there is a lion and a librarian in the mix, but they don’t eat much.”

“Seems crowded,” he said with a frown.

I shook my head. I motioned for the man to follow me. I gave him a bicycle tour of the town. The food supply was dwindling, but we shared a large jar of pickles. He followed diligently as I showed him a sampling of the available real-estate.

“And this one is a three bedroom with a nice size patio and a cement swimming hole. There is an outhouse in the back that I dug myself.”

“What would I do with a swimming hole?”

“Options seem limitless.”

The man took his sweet time testing my outhouse.

“Sir, I think I’ve been wasting your time. I’m a private man.”

“How about you take half the town? The lion, the librarian, and I will take the other. In fact, we don’t mind, we’ll move, and you can have the good half. The one with tallest building. Just come by every once in a while and we’ll play cards.”

He took his time letting his eyes roll over everything I had showed him.
“Nah,” he said. “I’ll just keep on walking. Got to find me my own town, don’t you know, there’re unclaimed states out there.” He pointed north. “I’m thinking about making Alaska mine, all mine.”

“Don’t you ever get lonely?”

“Never had the opportunity.” Walking away, he muttered something about a design he has for a burner that is powered by perpetual motion.

“What happens if it breaks?” I yell to him,

“Don’t know.”

“You won’t have any food.”

“Not much here either.” He left then, jogging. I shook my head and began to call Lucy.

“Here kitty kitty, here kitty kitty, here kitty kitty….”

History: An uncomfortable feeling in one’s stomach, a wish to do again, to do better.

In the 80’s, my parents, my sister, and I lived in a hot rural town in New Mexico. The ground was firm and dry, which made farming difficult. My father had the idea to raise and sell turkeys. My sister and I called the big one Tom. My father spent weeks creating a makeshift fence out of hay bails and barbed wire. On Sundays, he would sacrifice one for us to eat. Every week he would wear the same bloody outfit and, with the same dark crowbar in hand, he would pant as he chased the turkeys around their pen. My sister and I would squeeze palms when he grabbed one by the neck. In one motion, he ensnared the bird’s feet under the crowbar then stepped onto it with his large boots. I covered my sister’s eyes with my hands as I solemnly watched from behind the hay and through the wire. With the turkeys feet trapped under the crowbar, and his boots’ on top of the bar driving the bird’s feet into the ground, he pulled with all his strength on the neck. Cluck. After the breakage, the bird fervently flapped its wings in an attempt to fly until the heaviness of death stilled them. Feathers found ways of escaping, and after my father was gone, I would gather them and put them somewhere safe. Later, with blood and flesh caked under his fingernails, he would lead us in prayer. We would bow our heads and thank God for turkey.

Turkey became his obsession. The extra money allowed him to stay out late at night and keep secrets. After a while, blackbirds began to encroach on his new freedoms. They were stealing the turkey eggs and became the enemy. After dinner, he would crack a beer, light a cigarette, and sit on the back porch with a rifle under his arms until way after it was too dark to see. The shots were loud and sudden. I never knew where he was pointing, so at night I took my sister and forced her and myself under her crib. For protection, I pulled the crib-bars down. One night, I lost her. The first shot was fired, and then the second, and the third. I ran out the front door and grabbed my dad by his large biceps. “Stop, please, stop.” I wiped large tears and blew my nose on his red shirt. He spit out his cigarette and together we squinted our eyes at the darkness.

The piles of sleek black feathers and rotting bones, from before the accident, littered the yard, sending a message to the obstinate birds. The piles had grown high enough that the blackbirds thought twice and found other eggs to eat. The piles attracted rats and after they finished with the blackbirds, they ate our turkeys.

Gravity: A sticky mass that keeps you from flying—jumping from city to city—being super.

Walking out into the desert, I lay on my back, hold my telescope to my eyes and try to find her. During the day it’s too bright to see what has become of them. At night, it’s too dark. I convinced Francis to let me burn the last of the unaltered evidence against us. I had hoped the light would fill the whole sky and there would be a chance I would see her. You’d think they would want to know how Earth is doing. Someone—somewhere—must think so much of themselves that they believe they own here and there, and everything else I can see. If they don’t comeback, something will, and it will find a use for all of this sand.

Today I am going to sell a washing machine.

Felix

Felix Sherman has never sold a washing machine. He is a tiny man, not a dwarf, but awkwardly tiny. He makes the women uncomfortable.

“This model is a doozie!” said Felix, to a new woman. She wandered her eyes and tightened her fists.

“I think I’ll come back later.” She looked for a clock to check, she rustled through her purse.

“This model—this doozie! It won’t be around later.” Felix’s smile grew big as he puffed out his chest and rocked on the balls of his feet. “How bout I wrap it up for you?”

She tried not to look in the direction of what had to be a very tiny penis, “No thank you.”

The woman left the store. Felix watched longingly as she walked out of Appliance Mart and into Appliance Depot. He put his hands in his pockets and kicked the washer.

“Hey stop that!” Brian the manager had his eye on Felix. “I’ll have you mopping the floors!”

“Sorry! Brian.” Felix got on his hands and knees spit on his hands and removed the scuff mark his shoes had left. Felix had not wanted to sell washing machines; instead, he had first pursued a career as a helicopter pilot. The recruiters for the Air Force had laughed at him. They had taken his hat and held it out of his reach. On the first day of the rest of his life, Felix had found himself jumping for a miserable hat. The National Guard had been eager to recruit Felix to his ranks, but after months of being violently raped, Felix was dishonorably discharged.

In the break room Felix sighed as he looked at the hand drawn spread sheet advertising the fact that Felix was the worst salesman on the floor. He ran his small stubby fingers over the star stickers beside Derrick Van Bulane’s name. Derrick had sold nine washing machines in just October.

“We can’t stop the children from getting on the bus.”

I looked around and indeed random children of a variety of ethnicities speckled the seats.

“Where are they coming from?” I looked through the window, beyond the greasy fingerprints, children were crossing the brush in pursuit of the familiar yellow beacon. I looked back to see my mother with tears in her eyes. She was kneeling next to a middle eastern girl with a Barbie lunch box

“Where are your parents?” The girl shrugged her shoulders. My mother collapsed.

“We’re driving to Kansas. You don’t want to go to Kansas.” Her boyfriend, Jimbean, began to pick them up by their bird like shoulders and throw them out the emergency exit, but they would just run to the front, skin knees and all.

“You’ll have to ask them to pay.” I said. I suggested twenty dollars. Her face turned red with anger.

“No one has twenty dollars,” she said. They locked the bus with four kids still inside. My mother screamed from a crack in the window to the crowds of children who had begun to collect around the bus.

“I’m sorry, that’s all we can handle.” Some began to walk away. Some began to throw rocks.
Under each seat was a box of canned food. Large barrels of diesel were strapped to the roof and filled the back four seats. The fumes were nauseating. I handed each of the children a handkerchief to cover their mouths. The front of the bus was full of whiskey. Each bottled wrapped delicately in bubble wrap.

“You know you can hurt the booze?” I said.

“I know, but I like to try,” he said with a smile as he opened the doors, so I could be on my way. I turned to see my mother pursing her lips to keep from collapsing in terror of the unknown.

“What happens if we run our of food?” She said, with her head on my shoulder.

“You’ll hunt.”

“I’m not your father. I’m afraid of mice and possums.”

“You’ll farm.”

“I don’t want to!” She was grinding her teeth. “I want it to be like it used to be.” The children were staring now. I thought about my wife in a new world.

“We’re not supposed to live forever.” I also was afraid of mice and possums, but had to save face.

“Why don’t Jimbean and you, and everyone…” I motioned to the four young children sitting between a dozen bottles of whiskey and a dozen barrels of diesel. “Come with me.” Jimbean and my mother looked at each other, they curled their lips, and shook their heads.

“We don’t want to be a bother.” I got off the bus and waved as it turned up a cloud of dust and drove away. They might do well for themselves in Kansas. Thousands of acres of prairie still unoccupied, even though, Laura Ingalls Wilder, had made it sound so appealing. I chased the children west with large growls.

Neither her or I know why we choose to sleep under our bed at night. Technically, we’re suppose to sleep in the bathtub, but its full of mildew and I lost my last scrubby brush. I also have a phobia that involves loose hairs. Every time the bombs explode I shake her. She tells me to knock it off, but I’m afraid her heart will stop from the noise and I want to jostle it. Remind it, that the world has not ended. It is still red, beating, and employed full-time.

In the night, large fires burn where our neighbors used to play, in between explosions people throw their books down from stories above. They don’t want to be found out, the ones in tweed coats, leather patches, and complicated ideas have already been taken away. We drink wine with copies of Slaughter House Five and The Leaves of Grass duck taped to our bellies just in case tonight’s the night. We figure, they won’t take it from our cold dead hands because of the saying. I swallowed a flash drive with Shakespeare’s entire collection on it last night before I went to bed. If there is anything fun about what is going on it’s that our actions might be finally contributing to the greater good. Well, that and the fact that I left A Midsummer Night’s Dream on my desktop.

During the day we write letters to future generations and then file them in a fire proof box. Those kids are going to want to know why they don’t have a pot to piss in; me and her, feel personally responsible. We remind them, we honestly thought the earth was deeper, and though, we did have millions of pictures from space that proved the bottom was quite real, its hard to take that into consideration when you’re just one person. One that is half the size of even the smallest machine, and one that has a bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, no less, I promise, it doesn’t mean what you think. The horizon I see when I look out the window is barely even New Jersey. Beyond that, it goes on for thousands and thousands of miles, and I find it impossible for me, at any one moment in time, to account for it all. When I try, I start to sweat and then instinctually I take a shower. I’m sorry, if you don’t know what that means. In many of my letters, I like to remind these, our raggedy children of tomorrow, that in the capitalistic society that we lived in, gasoline was a commodity, and water wasn’t even a commodity and commodities are by definition, well according to Wikipedia “some good for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. It is a product that is the same no matter who produces it, such as petroleum, notebook paper, or milk.[1] In other words, copper is copper. The price of copper is universal, and fluctuates daily based on global supply and demand. Stereos, on the other hand, have many levels of quality. And, the better a stereo is [perceived to be], the more it will cost.” So yes, mistakes were made. Gasoline and copper should have been called Gods and not commodities. Water should have been called a word we never took the time to come up with.

What I never tell them, because I can’t help myself imagining them reading these letters huddled around camp fires in the middle of winter wearing worn impractical designer clothes from generations before, is that much of their dilemma is on my shoulders. When the fighting started and people with homemade guns and steel strapped to their chests, began to cross the border in the thousands. I couldn’t help watching. They held their empty paint buckets out at arms length, and insisted on being assisted. The first time I saw a murder; I nearly snapped. I wept over the dead body for an hour. Blood like fingerpaint, on my hands. A gas station attendant named Ron. His wallet was was brown and cheap.I pulled at the velcro and found some change. Bent into a crevice were photos of his wife and three kids arranged by age. All in clothing that suggested a sincere struggle. I drove to my home and turned the water on. My wife said something predictable like, hey, we need that. I shook my head and showed her Ron’s kids. She acknowledged they looked disheveled, but tried to stop me as I began compulsively flushing my own toilet. I lit my stove and let it burn all afternoon. I used my own last tank to drive to a secluded gas station, wrapped red handkerchiefs tightly around the handles of the pumps and drove away. Like a man with a dollar burning a hole in his pocket, I thought, foolishly, at the time, that we should just get it all over with. I had a pop up tent and a book about the history of boy-scouts. Later, when it was all gone, and I had a minute to give the book a closer inspection, it was clearly more biography of the original founders than the instructional guide for building fires and tying knots that I had had such high hopes for. So, just so you know, it hasn’t been a cake walk for me either. I’m sorry. I have no idea what your life is like, my hope is that you have one.

I walk through gravel rivers looking for salvation. Empty house after empty house first barricaded, and now dilapidated. The ones that left, took the time to board up cracked windows and fill porcelain tubs with wet cement. It’s been hard for a while now. They didn’t want the folks remaining to use their toilets or wear their underwear. An abandoned house is a black hole; there is no telling how deep the basements go. Sometimes removing floor boards reveals whole rooms that contain only a single mattress. The smell can be incestuous. I have inklings about whether or not a building will be a profitable excavation based solely on external irregularities. Once a Rolling Stones’ poster plastered to a garage door lead me to a Rolex.
At another juncture, I entered, by accident, a library because a large owl was perched on the building’s exposed and brittle rafters. It winked at me. The doors were locked with a large rusted padlock so, made my way to the nearest window and smashed it with my elbow. I pulled away the jagged shards, careful not to cut myself, and climbed through the dark porthole. The inside smelt like cigarettes and moss. The rows of books seemed relatively intact, except for a palm tree, which, had come through the ceiling and taken out M through O. Beyond the tree there was a woman was sitting quietly at the circulation desk. Her face was wrinkled and squashed like a toad’s. She had only a few remaining gray hairs on her head, and she was missing buttons. Minding her own business. Writing a note. Pretending not to see me.
“Hello, are you the librarian?” She hastily finished her note, folded it, and put it in an envelope.
“I have taken that role for myself.”
“Do you have a degree in library science?”
“I have degrees.”
“They must serve you well.” The woman did not respond.
“Would you like a drink?”
“I’m writing a book, when it is finished, I would like it to be placed in your library.”
“Has it been published?”
 “No.”
“I could have recommended a friend, but she’s traveling to peninsular Florida by burro train as we speak.”
“I’ll take that drink.” She reached below her desk and pulled out two shot glasses and a bottle of tequila. She told me her name was Francis. “Where did you get the tequila?”
“I’ve been saving it for a special occasion. You’re the first person that’s come to check out a book since all those quitters left. How about a mystery?”
“Let me take a look around.”
“Suit yourself.”
Libraries have always been autistic places. Opening a book, I can’t help but see the half truths, and misinterpreted proclamations, and false exclamations of victory. I used my pen and spent hours annotating history. Francis didn’t mind, she was asleep from too much tequila.
“Where’s your wife?” She had come to and was pointing to my wedding ring. I raised my hand and looked to the crumbling ceiling. She nodded and threw back another shot.

Love: A rich food, for only the richest people. see air.

When I first heard that there was an unoccupied planet far away with wide open spaces, where land was cheap, and resources were inexhaustible, I couldn’t decide whether, it was luck or fate. I remember watching the news—the anchor and his bouffant hair, wondering out loud with his infographics, attempting to calculate, how many people would be able to go and what it was going to come down to: race or sex or class or hair. I was white, male, and middle class. I was still prejudice enough to think it would not be random. During press conferences, the President, styled professionally, in an ivory suite, would give bombastic speeches about the “selection process” and the “perfect equation of people,” but she was going. That wasn’t random. The people who flooded the streets with homemade signs and bad attitudes, moaning about why it should be random; well, they must’ve been born yesterday, so I thought.
The papers called this selection process Democracy in Action. The TV guide called it Your Ticket to Paradise. Your Ticket to Paradise, a global game show, decided who would leave Earth and who would stay. My wife and I, would watch together, in our small apartment, with our tickets in hand, to remind ourselves of our numbers. A plastic experience filled with sequence, B-list celebrities, and useless handouts like Lamborghinis. Numbers, numbers, numbers were all anyone would talk about. When her number was called, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a smile. I put my head on her shoulder. Her mother called to congratulate her; she had been chosen weeks ago. Months later, when they called the last number, I threw up in my living room. She sobbed as she scrubbed the carpeting. I sat, comatose, at the kitchen table. The weeks after the last number was called were wet with tears. Tears on the radio. The bus was wet. I learned to bring a napkin to sit on. People asked if there were extras, and I never hesitated to share.
For months we argued and made lists of pros and cons. But in the end I ripped up the lists and in our small kitchen, under the harsh florescent lights, I told her to go. I said, “Send in your paperwork and make the decision later. You never know, maybe there is a heaven, and if so, I’ll find you. We’ll wear angel wings or become light. Either way our molecules will mix again.” I dried her eyes with a dishtowel. “Maybe someone will pull the wrong lever and you’ll die getting there, and I’ll live for one hundred years, by myself, but with books and gardens. The real things, no pre-programmed Kindles or plastic mums, for me. I can live in California if I want to. Sea wind in my thinning hair; that’s something I’ve always wanted. Who loses then?” She shrugged. She does that when I’m being dramatic.
That night we wrapped our naked bodies in down, and I kissed her ingrown toes and the thick hips she was always attempting to Ellipticycle away, even though, I asked her not to. I kissed her meaty breasts and course hair. I prayed with her nipples that she was joking, would refuse to go, insist on staying with me and our dog, Trixie. Our final months went by, during sex she would sweat and bawl about the injustices of the world, after she would get into my ears and whisper plans for eternity. Maybe next time I’ll be a boy and you’ll be a girl, she ‘d say. Trixie, will be a baby and everything will be green. I closed my eyes and pretended not to cry. Whenever parents or friends died, we talked about God, but I don’t believe in God. I live in the desert. Meteors have come and gone, it took millions of years, but I made it back. I don’t think I need God to come back again. But I agreed, everything will be green, she smiled and told me, you’ll be the last thing I think about in this body. Light years from now and here.

Governmental Body: An external mouth with no external ears.

The local mayors meet occasionally to discuss new business. The ten of us gather at a rotating location, once a month, hosted by that town’s presiding mayor. We have agendas like rationing and we are solicitous about topics like construction and procreating. My friend Chavez used to wash dishes at a casino and now he’s mayor of Boulder City. Chavez’s life will be important to the history of the world, and I spend time interviewing him and writing his auto-biography every week. He says, “Without the clutter of society I can reach my full potential.” We knock some of the last beers in the world and drink to that. He says, “finally, no money—no problems.” This new system doesn’t beggared Chavez like the old one did, and he doesn’t mind being lonely. He wants to learn as much as possible about the history of North America. He has big plans to become a scholar. I tell him the text books he’s reading are biased, but he insists they were written by a company. He found an astronomy book. He likes to show it to me and tell me about a mathematician from the seventeenth century who predicted that the universe is littered with black holes. Chavez says, “They never made it. Or they made it somewhere, possibly another dimension, but not paradise. The closest thing to paradise is right here.” He leans back to get a better view of the sky.
“No, they made it—everything they took, all the technology, the Pope, the Vice-President, the piece of the true cross, the Mona Lisa, the Eiffel Tower, the Magna Carta; if it was a risk they would have left us something to honor.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Chavez drinks the last swig of his beer and jumps on his bicycle. “I should get back before dark.” Chavez lives alone in Boulder City. He’s afraid that if he is gone for too long someone will take it from him. I live alone too, well except for Francis, but she keeps to herself. Everyone can have their own town now, and people like it that way. The food will last a while and then the Earth will sigh with relief. The roaches can have it.

Gravity: A sticky mass that keeps you from flying—jumping from city to city—being super.

The people and entities who left: The government, the friends, and the families they don’t talk to us. You’d think they would want to know how the orb is doing. Someone—somewhere must think so much of themselves that they believe that they own here and there, and everything else I can see. Communication was so revered, and now I don’t even have a string long enough to play telephone with. Walking out into the desert, I lay on my back, and shield my eyes from the sun. During the day it’s too bright to see where they’ve gone, at night it’s too dark. With everyone gone, the frontier is everywhere: right here, out there, under what’s left of the sea.

History: An uncomfortable feeling in ones stomach, a wish to do again, to do better.

In the 80’s, my parents, my sister, and I lived in a hot rural town in New Mexico. The ground was firm and dry, which made farming difficult. My father had the idea to raise and sell Turkeys; my sister and I called the big one Tom. My father, spent weeks creating a makeshift fence out of hay bails and barbed wire. On Sundays, he would sacrifice one for us to eat. Every week he would wear the same bloody outfit, and with the same dark crowbar in hand, he would pant as he chased the turkeys around their pen. My sister and I would squeeze palms when he grabbed one by the neck. In one motion, he ensnared the bird’s feet under the crowbar then stepped onto it with his large boots. I covered my sisters eyes with my hands as I solemnly watched from behind the hay and through the wire. With the turkeys feet trapped under the crowbar, and his feet on top of the bar driving the bird’s feet into the ground, he pulled with all his strength on the neck. Cluck. After the breakage, the bird fervently flapped its wings in an attempt to fly until the heaviness of death stilled them. Feathers found ways of escaping, and after he was gone, I would gather them and put them somewhere safe. Later, with blood and flesh caked under his finger nails, he would lead us in prayer. We would bow our heads and thank God for turkey.
Turkey became his obsession, the extra money allowed him to stay out late at night and keep secrets. After a while, blackbirds began to encroach on his new freedoms. They were stealing the turkey eggs and became the enemy. After dinner, he would crack a beer, light a cigarette, and sit on the back porch with a rifle under his arms until way after it was too dark to see. The shots were loud and sudden. I never knew where he was pointing so, I took my sister and crawled under her crib. For protection I pulled the crib-bars down. Eventually, piles of sleek black feathers and rotting bones littered the yard sending a message to the obstinate birds. When the piles grew high enough; the blackbirds found other eggs to eat. The piles attracted rats and after they finished with the blackbirds’ corpses, they ate our turkeys. Considering my present situation, a diet consisting of canned food and the occasional cactus, I would eat a turkey, a buffalo, a blackbird, or a rat.

Apotheosis: A proud and disappointing moment.

The morning she left we tried to recreate an average morning. I told her that was what I would miss the most. Drinking coffee in our bathrobes and having sex in our shower. I remember my breakfast cereal had chocolate in it and I didn’t bother to conserve. I ate my fill. We laid in bed, her head on my lap, until the doorbell rang twice. Right before she left I made a mistake. Standing in our doorway I said, “Don’t go.” Her mom was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. She began to cry and shake her head.
“Are you serious?” she said. I lied.
“No, I’m not serious.” I grabbed onto her yellow sweater and clenched my fists. I bit her shoulder and I put my hands around her fragile neck. I said, “No, I’m not serious.”
After the door closed I ran to the window and watched her enter the parade of people walking away.
During the day, I charged my batteries and prepared a grand meal for, Trixie, with the last of our perishable food. As the sun went down, I climbed out our bedroom window and onto the fire escape. I made my way to the roof of our building. Large, cruise ships filled the sky from horizon to horizon. For months previous, they had scraped the remaining iron ore out of the mountains to make the metal giants. They bulldozed and hoarded skyscrapers, railways, and airplanes melting and mixing them into molds. In the last days, hundreds of tank trucks went from gas station to gas station suckling and swallowing the final drops of dark power. The ships glistened white, some ten and some twenty stories tall. Each ships main deck, was connected to the ground by eight translucent covered stairways. Through the diaphanous tubes I could see the shadows of the lucky ones climbing to paradise. An exodus, so brilliant, I couldn’t help but applaud our ingenuity.
Government officials erected cement walls to keep the people whose numbers were not called out of the way. Snipers poked guns out of deep crenels, and shot anyone making a ruckus, or anyone standing by someone making a ruckus. Smoke began to block my view, as the ships began to break away from the connecting stairs. A diaspora as big as humanity got smaller and smaller as it got further and further away. From above I could see the people left becoming anxious, guns were fired, glass was broken, and the city was suddenly ablaze. The only structure strong enough to resist the heat were the stairs to nowhere that now stand, in every town and country, as monuments to our last day together.
When the ships were gone and safe from any harm we, on the ground, could cause them, the lights were turned off. In meetings held in high school gymnasiums all across the country the officials were blunt, “You are free to use the electrical grid, the water mains, and the nuclear reactor just as soon as you know how to turn them back on.” For a few days I studied the instructional manuals they passed out at the meeting. I bought a shovel for coal mining, but it all appeared to be more trouble than it was worth. The small amount of people left didn’t bother valuing our limited resources, and from what I saw wouldn’t have appreciated it even it I did learn how to manufacture coal. They burnt the streets, stole all those stereos, killed my dog Trixie, killed the president (who actually didn’t get to go after all), and poisoned the water with the some of the last bottles of Drano and boxes of Tide. Then they took off for more temperate climates. For the first couple of weeks I scrubbed day and night. I had an economy sized bottle of Pledge, but it was never enough. I kept going back to the store, which was not in the same shape as it used to be. The doors were torn from their hinges and all the ice cream was gone gone gone.
I thought I’d get a deal on a mansion in Beverly Hills, but the Japanese got there first. I thought I’d go to Japan, but from what I hear, from word of mouth, the Chinese have moved in. Most days I think, maybe right here is fine for now.The desert gets a little hot sometimes, but its all mine. I never could grow anything here, but maybe I won’t have to. There could be a cataclysmic event around the corner. The wind picks up, and I lose hold on the plastic bag I carry for emergencies. I watch it sail to the ground. I don’t sweat it—I can’t imagine ever running out of plastic bags.

Livestock: Beings that would rather be taken advantage of than extinct. See elderly, dogs, hamsters.

At the very beginning, I made a mistake at the zoo. Chavez and I had an argument about what to do with the animals. He said, “Feed the small ones dog food.” The fresh produce was gone, and the canned food was a necessity. Chavez pulled out a pistol and walked through the main entrance. I followed close behind. The squawking and screaming din of hungry impatient animals was so loud I almost didn’t hear him fire the first shot. A brown bear, surrounded by cheap plaster rocks, reared up on his hind legs, exposed his teeth, and then collapsed like a marionette. Chavez blew into the barrel of his gun. “We can’t have bears running around.” Chavez explained that we had to eat every part of the bear. It was the sensible thing to do. We climbed over the low fence and jumped into the pit. With one cut, the bears viscera were on the ground, and its ribs gleamed light. I knelt down and kissed the bear on its forehead. After that, I told Chavez, I would take care of my own zoo. He spit on my shoes and told me I wasn’t prepared for the responsibility.
Animals should be free to experience all the same emotional highs and lows available to me. I found a bolt cutter in the back of a Home Depot. My method for release could have been more…methodical. It took the cougar five minutes to eat six penguins. I should have given those penguins a proper head start. Much to my chagrin, the carnivores never seemed to fill. They roamed the streets searching for prey, and in only a few days they began to hunt each other. By the weekend it was just me and Lucy, the lion. Chavez, shook his head at all the missed opportunities for Thanksgivings and meat. He told me he was hungry and to shoot it. Francis, told me to shoot it too, but I couldn’t.
Now, at the same time everyday I break open an economy size can of corn beef and hash, from Costco, for Lucy. Recent events have worn her down. Her hair is mangled, her fur is matted, and her hips protrude sharply; she’s out of shape and slow. I know where she sleeps, and every morning, before the sun is up, I ride by her on my bike. I throw the hash and peddle like mad. She always wants more, and I know she wants me. I’ll never kill that lion. Every day that I share food with Lucy is one less day I’ll live, but now I have something to honor, and that keeps me alive.

Nonsense: Formalities.

The day after they turned off the lights there was a ceremony. A man shook my hand. It was someone important even though I don’t remember what his name tag said. He wore a monocle and a silk black top hat, and his wife wore an elegant sash. I thought it suited her. I wear a sash all the time now. Not many people see me and the ones that do—don’t think I’m putting on airs, or trying to be something I’m not. It’s a gold sash encrusted with silver gemstones. I found it while I was rifling through an apartment. It used to say, Miss America, but I scribbled it out. The Dean of my undergraduate university once said, “Ely, one day you’ll be an important man, a sash you should wear.” The word important still echoes from my external auditory canal to the temporal bone of my pale ears.

Friend: Bugs that bring their dead home, so that they can be buried in their own beds.

The desert surrounds my town. I spend my days on the top of the tallest building with a pair of binoculars I’ve had since I was a child. I’m vigilant about Lucy. Also, if anyone happens to stumble upon my town, I want to make sure they are taken care of. For instance, a man came by the other day. He must have been fifty or sixty years old. He had a backpack and a sleeping bag strapped to his back. On his shirt, he wore an official badge, shaped in the form of a star. On his head, he wore a cowboy hat. His beard was ratty, and his face was grizzled. I filled my pack with hash in case I ran into Lucy, and went to meet him.
“Good morning, Sheriff?” I said, as he made his way over the dune that bled into the city.
“You don’t have to call me that if you don’t want to. I just wear it to impress the ladies.”
“I sort of do want to.” The man tilted his head and read my sash.
“You mayor of this town?”
“Yes, almost two years now. I’d be glad to show you around.”
“You’re the only one living here?”
“Well, there is a lion and a librarian in the mix, but they don’t eat much.”
“Seems crowded,” he said with a frown. I shook my head. I motioned to the man to follow me. I gave him a bicycle tour of the twenty or so grocery stores in town, including a Costco. The food supply was limited, but had barely been touched. We opened an econo size jar of pickles for lunch, and barely finished it. He followed diligently as I showed him some of the primo houses available.
“And this one is a three bed room with a nice size patio and a swimming hole. There is an outhouse out back that I dug myself.”
“What would I do with a swimming hole?”
“Anything.”
“Sir, I think I’ve been wasting your time. I’m a private man.”
“How about you take half the town? The lion, the librarian, and I, we’ll take the other. In fact, we don’t mind, we’ll move, and you can have the good half. The one with three Whole Foods and the Costco. Just come by every once in a while. We’ll play cards.” He took his time letting his eyes roll over everything I had showed him.
“Nah,” he said. “I’ll just keep on walking. Got to find me my own town, don’t you know, there’re unclaimed states out up there.” He points north. “I’m thinking about making Alaska mine all mine.” Walking away, he muttered something about a design he has for a burner that is powered by perpetual motion. I yell to him,
“What happens if it breaks?”
“Don’t know.” I shook my head. He left then, jogging.

My PhD in Eschatology,
is useless. I’ll gnash teeth
with the rest you-all. Forty-
six and not expecting

in 2029.

Only the wicked are diagnosed
triskaidekaphobes, given pills,
reprimanded, reminded
better to be silent than negative.

11, 38, 91, 125, 144, 163, 194…
today—bolide out there, fired
on time, an approximate twenty-six,
but for the sleepy period
between 38 and 91. We made
amphibian then.

I watch the news, The stars of heaven
fall unto the Earth. Exalted sheep piled
on the right, snubbed goats evaporated
on the left.

Sister and I, create fuzz with cotton.

2. A Guide to Amateur Astronomy

It’s more fun to look for
an anomalous star, then fret
over vicissitudes.

Simulated models show the moon
colliding with your continents,
You read it, and Murphy records it.

Frontiers are where customs
break like collapsing universes, space
wide enough for American ingenuity.

My kaleidoscope whispers,
“Put me in your pocket,
run towards the mountains.”

3. The New New American Frontier

Louis, Clark, George W.,
my sister and I, will not wait
to be the third world’s bundled tares.

Packing the superficial out of spite.
Gold rings, silk ties, moon pies,
and soda pop for base camp.

See potential in this arid acidic
corpse’s mouth—nothing says,
begin anew, a bottomless pit.

Inside, a world with two moons,
building one with two suns,
shared deities—no darkness,
or curios theocracy.

He heard a car pull into his driveway; they had their brights on. He put his penis in his pants and stood up to see who it was. All he could see was light and the purple haze of his iris. He grabbed a shirt and slipped his feet into a pair of sandals. He was sure she wanted the push lawn mower she had bought him last month for his birthday. John cracked a beer and stumbled outside with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Hello?, he shouted. The driveway was empty of cars, but full of light. It was coming from above. A soft hum reverberated off any object spiring out of the ground. He touched the mailbox to make it stop nervously shaking. Sirens began to drown out the hum, and then the crickets. A neighbor, Bob, stumbled, out of his house. He put his hands on his head and gawked as made it over to John’s shoulders. What is it?, said Bob, I don’t know, said John. The light began to feel heavy, and sticky as thorn-berries. It began to tug roughly on his shirt and Bob’s bathrobe. Slowly, they stepped back, but even the hairs on their legs and arms pulled them forward. Bob’s untied shoe laces began to inch forward, tripping him. His hands clawed the ground, but his hair went toward the light. Soon he was floating and John was bewildered. Bob? John ran into his yard and up to his front door. He gripped the handle, however, his shirt was stuck in the light. It was going up. John’s grip loosened as his curiosity was increasing. The light started to burn as he floated into the amorphous brightness. Soon scars began to rise from his skin, and then it turned a crunchy black.

Cindy came over the next morning to pick up the push lawnmower she had purchased for his birthday. The house was still smoldering. Fatty pieces of flesh had melted to the bed posts, and all the books were gone. She found rabbit ears for the television, and a microwave. For awhile she cried, but then she called me, asking where John was. I told her, he came to my bedside last night and told me a dream.

in 2029.

Only the wicked are diagnosed
triskaidekaphobes, given pills,
reprimanded, reminded
better to be silent than negative.

11, 38, 91, 125, 144, 163, 194…
today—bolide out there, fired
on time, every twenty-six,
except for the sleepy period
between 38 and 91. We made
amphibian then.

I watch the news, The stars of heaven
fall unto the Earth. Exalted sheep piled
on the right, snubbed goats evaporated
on the left.

Sister and I, cover our hooves with mittens.

2. A Guide to Amateur Astronomy

It’s more fun to look
for the anomalous collage, than worry
over vicissitudes.

Simulated models show the moon
colliding with your continents,
You read it, and Murphy records it.

Frontiers are where customs
break like collapsing universes, space
wide enough for American ingenuity.

My kaleidoscope whispers,
“Run toward the mountains,
put me in your pocket.”

3. The New New American Frontier

Louis, Clark, George Bush, my sister
and I, will not wait
to be the third world’s bundled tares.

Packing the superficial out of spite.
Gold rings, silk ties, moon pies,
and soda pop for base camp.

See potential in this arid acidic
corpse’s mouth—nothing says,
begin anew like bottomless pit.

Inside, a world with two moons,
building one with two suns,
shared deities—no darkness,
or curios theocracy.

I’m staying and she’s going. How could she stay? How could she not go? I told her, Go. I said, just go. You never know, maybe there is a heaven, and if so, maybe I’ll see you again. Hey, maybe you’ll die getting there and I’ll live out my entire life, by myself, but with books and gardens. I can live in California if I want to. She always shrugs when I’m dramatic. Now, that I have time to think about, it was sort of jerky of her to go. Yeah, it would have been exciting to see space, to see mars, but you can die slipping on a bar of soap in the shower, bumping your head the wrong way trying to find something in the attic. Nothing is certain, and really, is anything more practical than doing nothing? Sometimes I scream to her, and sometimes I think she has already slipped in some shower. I’ve always been lucky. When I found out it wasn’t random, I thought I’d be going with.

It’s a shame the people who wanted the process to be random didn’t know sooner that most of them would be going. They might not have burnt the streets, stole all those stereos, killed my dog, killed the president, poisoned the water. Now, they’re going and I’m scrubbing day and night. I found some wood cleaner that smells like pine trees. I keep it by my bed and night and if I wake up shaking and sweating, terrified. I grab the wood cleaner. I smell it and think of a time when forests were special, when they weren’t everywhere, and taking over.

I thought I’d get a deal on a mansion in Beverly Hills, but the Japanese got there first. I thought I’d go to Japan, but the Chinese have moved in. Some days I think, maybe right here is fine for now. It gets a little cold sometimes; it gets a little hot sometimes, but its all mine. There are ten grocery stores in this town and all of them are stocked. I could never grow anything here, but maybe I won’t have to. I got all of those grocery stores.

I wish my dog hadn’t died. I wish they would have lied to us…just a little. I wish they would have made big lying declarative statements like, “The planet is warming, sea levels are rising, if we don’t clean up this Earth—we’re all going to die.” Then, at least, I’d have less work to do now, and there would be more hands. But, they didn’t do that. They tore down skyscrapers and factories, used every remaining piece of steel to build rocket ships, and loaded everybody up. Took off. I waved until they couldn’t see me anymore. I couldn’t see them anymore.

The government, the friends, and the families, they don’t talk to us. You’d think they would have shown us how to use one of those “satellite feeds” or like a powerful walkie-talkie. They didn’t do that. They did shake my hand. It was someone important, he wore a hat and his wife, wore a fancy sash. I thought it suited her. I wear a sash all the time now. No one sees me, no one thinks I’m putting on airs or trying to be someone who I’m not. I am though. I went to school for a long time and they said, when you get out of here you’re going to be important.

I use to go see movies about the end of the world, civilization. They always showed the remaining survivors grouped together, waging war against other groups, but at least hanging out in hamlets. I never saw a movie about the remaining folks on earth claiming whole cities for themselves. Living in solitude. A guy came by the other day and he said, you living in this town? I said, yeah, I’m living in this town, but hey man, you can have the other half. I’ll give you the good half. The one with three whole foods and a costco. Just come by every once in a while. We’ll play cards. He looked at me, chewing his gum, taking his time as his eyes rolled over the cityscape. Nah, he said, I’ll just keep on walking. Gots to find me my own town, dontcha know, there’re unclaimed states out there. I’m thinking about making Alaska mine all mine. I shook my head. A death sentence for sure, for both of us.

Alone in her room Dolores removes her clip on earrings and sets them on her nightstand. She allows her robe to fall to the floor as she reaches for lipstick. Slowly painting her face, her eyes wonder. She grabs her breasts,pushing and pulling them up to her neck, out past her stomach. Her face red and done, she takes out a notepad and in lipstick she inscribes the words I love you, Ed.
“I’m blind, not deaf.” Ed says as he looks down to read the note.
“Lets make love. These are real breasts.”
“I don’t care about breasts.”
“Grab me.” Dolores reaches for Ed’s hand, but he pulls away. He puts his hands in his pockets and shakes his head. He struggles to his feet, and leaves.
“Oh God, just get out.” Dolores pulls her underwear up around her belly and slams the door, minutes after Ed has left.

“I’m going to cut the deck.” Margaret reaches for the cards.
“Is Ed coming today?”asks Emma.
“I haven’t seen him in weeks.” says Jim. “I remember him saying something about going on a cruise.”
“I’m sure he’s fine.” Dolores lays a pair. “Yesterday, I saw a rabbit use a toothbrush.”
“No, you didn’t.” Magaret throws her cards on the table and rings a nurse to take her back to her room. The rest of the hand is finished before she is wheeled away.

Emma turns the television off and gets out a stack of newspapers. She covers the floor and begins highlighting words that remind her of before: Elephant, Volkswagon, President, Best Buy, $.99 cents, Valentine, City, Prairie, Orange Juice, Stereo, Marigold, Toy, Tire, Battery—Battery. Battery, battery, battery, battery…What was battery? Emma, calls her daughter.
“Gina, I can’t remember what is battery?”
“Mom, it’s late where’s dad?”
“Who?”
“Dad!”
“What is battery?”
“I’m going now.” Emma listens to the dial tone, but eventually puts the phone back in the cradle. She cuts the word battery out of the newspaper, puts it in a jelly jar, and seals it tight. The jar is full.

“I’m going to cut the deck.” Margaret reaches for the cards.
“Looks, like its just the two of us,” says Dolores.
“Go fish?”
“Sure.”