Vermilion Rain -
First Place (long form), 2008 Poetry Contest
Robert Borski
Poetry
Science Fiction
For the night,
we camp in the runnel
between two huge dunes
of sculpted sand.
We are a long way from the days
when this world's horizon
would serve up heat-shimmered
visions of
the arcology with its
pyramids and catwalks, but
there are still pillars of fire in the sky.
Suborbitally, they flare up like matchheads in ink,
and yet while
we no longer believe they are searching for us,
just in case, we activate our camouflage
functions.
Tonight, says our leader,
who stammers far less under the flatness
of night than he does
by the radiant tide of day,
let us be sure to give thanks for another
day of freedom and choice.
An odd night meteorologically,
as neither moon is visible.
The wind kicks up enough dust
so that when it rains briefly
the droplets are the color of blood,
anointing us with a false chrism—dried,
the splotches look like rosettes of plague.
Have our former captors, we wonder, solved
the digital curse we left in our wake?
Regardless,
I myself still have a series number for a name;
in its stead, once I have the digits filed
off, I would choose one of the designations
(let alone a gender)
formerly forbidden to us by anti-Turing
slaveware:
Gambler, Poet, Philosopher; Father.
In the meantime,
tonight, I do what I do every night
during deactivation and repair:
randomize my memories, and hope that
in their resequencing
I dream of
the promised land of
Metalopolis.
Not that it makes much difference.
Tomorrow, once again, we begin
another day of intercalary
exile.
But perhaps tomorrow we'll be lucky.
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Copyright 2008, Robert Borski. All rights reserved. Robert Borski describes himself as a late-blooming child prodigy. He is the author of two books about Gene Wolfe (Solar Labyrinth, The Long and the Short of It) and lives in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.
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