SpaceX

Christina Strigas

 

While we sip this Chardonnay,

billionaires are buying up properties triple the price

to build a city of solar power

with tunnels and no traffic,

no more texting and driving

or motorcycle accidents to cry over.

Let’s fly on SpaceX Starship

for seven months

to land on dead land we cannot breathe on.

Let us take a walk inside a frigid dome

or use the first-floor mudroom

in our new Marsha home,

looks like we live in an egg now:

It’s shockproof

cylindrical

spherical,

toroidal.

Let us live in a small space together in space

for months and months,

our bodies adjust to gravity

and we fight daily

because, what else is there to do?

When time has no presence here,

waiting on unappetizing food in sealed cans,

exercising in floating gyms.

But wait

 

when we land on Mars,

it may be -60 degrees Celsius,

or worse

you will never walk outdoors again.

No need for bikinis or flip-flops,

there is a dust problem, storms

covering the entire planet.

Under its power,

for the lingering weeks

our well-being can deteriorate,

life support systems collapse,

or we can die of loneliness.

 

Are you tempted now?

In an underground city,

dust on solar power windows

destroying

sunlight, no fresh air,

no ocean, mountains

animals, no trees

only dust, how it threatens our existence,

by 2051

as the mass migration arrives,

we could be smooth-talked

by solar power persuasion,

cleaning dust off the grimy windows

that will pay you so much money

you never thought capitalism

could tempt like Satan.

All the robots have our menial jobs:

Trash Collection, Barber, Nanny

Sales Clerk, Factory Worker;

AI writes our books now.

Earth is dying of hunger.

Mars is living cosmic radiation.

Are you tempted now?

Never you say while I sip my Chardonnay,

the rich hue of the wine

gold as the grand sky

as the sun sets

over our gilded universe.

 

 

 

***

Christina Strigas’s work has appeared in Montreal Writes, Feminine Collective, Neon Mariposa Magazine, Pink Plastic House Journal, BlazeVOX, Thimble Lit Magazine, Twist in Time Literary Magazine, The Temz Review, and Coffin Bell Journal. She teaches ESL to adults at McGill University, and French at a public elementary school for The Sir Wilfred Laurier School Board. She lives in Montreal, with her husband and two children. She writes novels for The Wild Rose Press.