Outlook

Contributor: Alyssa Nickerson

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I will not set foot in this new
millennium. You heard me.
I will not go, though to you
I will seem old. This zombie

generation holds no merit
for me, this obscene parody
of a population ignorant
of life outside LCD screens.

Modern obsession feeds
the hordes who need only
the newest great invention
and think only of the Joneses:

a mob who would sell their soul
or another’s for the false gold
trinkets of our go-go gadget age.

I’ll stick to the page and abstain
from the pledge of Allegiance to
Google and the weekly shame
of America’s carnival celebrities.

Your face is haunted by digital
light, a blue glow that floats
about your desk and lounges
in epithelial nests gouged out
by age. You ask in a voice like
rattled chains: how can we waste
the time it might take to peel
our sight away from the maze
we create through veiled waves
and the latest Youtube craze?

We cannot be expected to turn
from the familiar, fatal hum of
cell phones to attend to the mortal
moans of our crippled civilization.

And I cannot begin to answer you.

No, though I may go against the grain,
I will not go forward into this new age.


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Alyssa Nickerson is the product of wonder and wanderlust. She was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and plans to move to Georgia to study writing at the Savannah College of Art and Design. She has been published in Word Riot, VAYAVYA, Poetry Quarterly, Camel Saloon (including Editor's Choice), Eunoia Review, Downer Magazine, and other journals.