Chapter I: Chained and Carved
the world’s best and hardest worker
Abby Lacey
if human is nature, nature is barter.
we designate coincidence,
the interweaving hues blurs the boundaries:
one framed by windowpane,
one by leather stitching,
green mimics green,
both at the mercy of the world’s best and hardest workers.
the world’s best and hardest workers
tell me economics trickle down like water,
but the droughts
drained the oasis dry
and my wallet remains lined
with lint instead of liquid
while they bathe in the blue blood
and the yellowing bile of regurgitated lies
that made the heated pool go green.
I watch with disdain as the world’s best and hardest worker
gathers all the leaves in pinched and pilfered piles
and pitches them back to the trees
at competitive prices,
a natural-born salesman,
prophet for profit
making chlorophyllic investments
and pocketing a duller shade of green.
I walk to work where the lights stay on all day.
beyond the sand-pressed glass of the window
it gets dark at dinner
as the world’s best and hardest worker’s rocket
eclipses the sun.
and when the great beast
glides by on gilded wings,
progress tracked by cumulus jet stream,
we all want to laugh.
and so we laugh, briefly,
until we realize with jaws agape
and stomachs lurched
that thing is plated with heavy gold
and yet, it flies.
as the sunlight reflects
off the industrial Icarus
and beams into my screen-strained eyes
I am Gatsby,
my vision overcome with green.
someday the world’s best and hardest worker
will recline in an intergalactic lawn chair,
sipping organic earth tree sap
siphoned from the last living specimen
he hoards in his greenhouse like wealth,
preserved by his prototypical
dual crypto-mining heat lamp
and water embezzled from the rampant flooding
of his new neighbour: Earth.
I’d like to be there, too,
cast above in the starry sky,
permanently intubated,
0.38 times lighter,
but I paid my fair share of taxes
and the world’s best and hardest worker’s, too.
by the end of days they’ve all gone Martian:
alien green.
