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.