Scripts for the Future

chatter around town will be of blindness  

all ghosts will be Russian ghosts at parties 


				                           always the law here is to sing, 
                                                                believe me 

				                           no thought-bubble tarries 
                                                                above your head   

				                           for all the brethren to read, 
                                                                they’re streaming  


a film on the history of the sun 

since eyes evolved to see underwater 


				                           do you prefer photos of 
                                                                landscapes or  

				                           photos of people, you choose 
                                                                the figure  

				                           for god among the lavish 
                                                                descriptions  

				                           of polar deserts, information 
                                                                clouds 


known as the neobeautiful, watching  

four-minute videos on how to draw 

blood samples with a butterfly needle 


				                           you will all have gone ancestral 
                                                                by then 


say unto them that you were changed into  

a heliotropic plant then back to  

a woman then a plant again, unlucky  

women carry too much yellow bile  

what paleozoic sunlight was like  


				                           acknowledge soul begins in the 
                                                                liver  

				                           take the vexing thought to the 
                                                                anagram 

				                           machine: net worth 
                                                                metamorphoses into  

				                           a wet thorn, tell me what my 
                                                                “about” shall be  


there’s a cherry tree at the center of  

puberty, a chlorine hand wash before entering  

love’s written all over your face, my love  

what incredible footage has emerged 
Credit

Originally published in Adroit Journal. Copyright © 2016 by Carolina Ebeid. Used with the permission of the author.