forks (ukiah • haiku • tanka)

an eye asquint at weather
roam through the ruins
frontispiece in shards anew

cling to my vestments
forks in the road are not forks
my hairshirt newly shredded

you look up and smile
blinded by the ecliptic —
apocalyptic —
you shall never attain this
the world barren bears nothing

What I’m Reading:

Climate fiction is one reason ‘dystopian realism’ is increasingly ‘near-future’ rather than set in some inscrutable distant time. We’re in an era where we don’t have to construct thought experiments to see what a dark future might look like, because these days it feels the end of world as we know it is looming over us. In fact, it can make writing a near-future dystopian a tricky endeavor: Predictions might come true before a book is published.

— Yume Kitasei / “‘It’s Okay But It’s Also Really Not.’ When Dystopian Fiction is No Longer a Thought Experiment” / Lithub