by Adriana Wiszniewska
In the event of apocalypse,
we will not be saved.
But we’ve focus-grouped ways
to minimize the damage.
The brightest minds
think-tanking the
End Times.
This place is not a place of honor.
This place is a message.
This message is a warning about danger.
How human! To imagine
our own survival
when the odds are stacked
mountain high
against us. We’ll turn our failures
into fairy tales, sing songs
of our shameful mistakes,
mythologize our madness
for the next ten
millennia.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
We predict
a world of technicolor
feline abominations, cursed offspring
of our blessed experimentation.
In two thousand years, catastrophe
will be Catholicized, sacred
knowledge passed down by an unholy
atomic priesthood, heaping
atrocity upon atrocity.
A Landscape of Thorns
breeding unnatural growth, artificial
plants encoded with hidden DNA
transmissions
Oh the flowers
They cover over everything.
The flowers cover over everything.
Traces of our noble experiment will linger
in the very earth,
waiting to be discovered.
Pay attention!
This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
Sending this message was important to us.
Who will be left to hear it?
Adriana Wiszniewska is a writer and photographer from Ottawa, ON. She lives in Montreal and spends her days thinking about space and marvelling at the things people do with words.
Headlight Anthology 