Now let’s all take a deep breath and start over.Hello, my name is mostly water.My name is I have never known a worldother than this one. You too? Maybeyou are also dismayed by our inabilityto quickly travel into space and were hopingby the time you grew up there would besomething resembling a bullet train to the moonor even Mars. In the Fifties, they seemed so sureof the future’s brightness, which may have beena side effect of having stared directly at the blastof the atomic bomb and believing perhaps foolishlybut understandably that things could notget worse and so had to get better.It never works that way, does it?My parents are hunkered down in Floridawaiting for the latest hurricaneto do whatever it is going to doand there’s another hurricane queued upbehind it. You can believe that because you’re aliveand living is a procession of letdowns punctuatedhopefully by pinnacles of good feeling. It never worksthat way, does it? Still, the water in your handsis the water in my hands is the watersaw-blading its way up the coast.Give me a hand with this thing we call the future.
Future Theory
Feature Date
- May 7, 2019
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Copyright © 2019 by Andrew Hemmert
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Andrew Hemmert
Andrew Hemmert is a sixth-generation Floridian living in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bat City Review, The Greensboro Review, North American Review, Poet Lore, and Prairie Schooner. His poem “Broken Season” won River Styx’s 2018 International Poetry Contest. He earned his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and currently serves as an assistant editor for FifthWednesday Journal.
Winter 2019
Ann Arbor, Michigan
University of Michigan
Editor
Khaled Mattawa
Poetry Editor
Carlina Duan
Managing Editor
Aaron J. Stone
Michigan Quarterly Review is an interdisciplinary and international literary journal, combining distinctive voices in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, as well as works in translation. Our work extends online as well, where we publish cultural commentary alongside reviews and interviews with writers, artists, and cultural figures around the world. The flagship literary journal of the University of Michigan, our magazine embraces creative urgency and cultural relevance, aiming to challenge conventions and address long-overdue conversations. As we continue to promote an expansive and inclusive vision, we seek work from established and emerging writers with diverse aesthetics and experiences.
Twice a year, we curate an array of perspectives on a single theme. Past special issues have included writing on the Flint Water Crisis, the Great Lakes, Greece, China, and Caregiving.
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