from my unpublished collection
Hey, fancy-schmanzy, my uncle says. The ears of corn are wrapped in foil, the famous black and gold, known throughout the world, that proclaims them non-GM. You’ve come up in the world. Get you a steak next. I tell him we’ll get steaks for two, true organic, and oranges fresh from the tree. We BS like this while he sets the water boiling and lays our GM meat on the grill. All-Fruit’s not the same, he tells me. It just tastes sweet. It’s stupid, but I really do like hearing all about those days, the farm our family owned. The stuff they did as kids I’d never let my kids do now, hell, they’d take them from me.
In the condos across the street, a police drone flits from floor to floor, a blue orb sampling conversations, taking video. A green orb turns and drops: it’s spotted someone wasting. We watch the evening show. Must be some good flying weather, my uncle turns the meat. A drone the size of a kid’s balloon bumps against our balcony. It’s translucent, soft, you can see its hollow core. This one’s a sniffer, trolling for illicit drugs, certain pheromones – anger, fear – for referral to a blue orb; scanning for trace elements from explosives, for referral to a black orb, I suppose. But those were good times, man, those were the days.
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First published in The Beloit Poetry Journal
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images and text © by Alpay Ulku
