The Glacier
Issue Three
Winter 2024

Artificial Mother

The aging cybernetician sounds optimistic.
About the near future, the nano-bots sent
through our bloodstream to the neocortex
to back up our minds to the cloud. About
all of us soon becoming perpetual replicas
of ourselves. He points to the exponential
growth of computation and the unavoidable
end of speech. He wears wide suspenders
and a reddish toupee, parted in the middle.
His words are unhurried, a bit slurred.
He says he needs to live another fifteen
to twenty years to achieve immortality.
Will this brilliant, synthetic future still allow
for stupidity? Ambiguity? Passion? For
the usual stations of childhood? His mother
died when he was five. A prolific author,
she wrote on dozens of topics. Over the past
decade, he has uploaded all her essays
to a mainframe and transformed them
into a pliant presence. It is crude, he says,
but it works. He asks her questions he never
had a chance to pose when she was alive.
They discuss science, philosophy and art.
The answers are terse, some arriving swifter
than others. Her favorite reply is “Love.”

Who Knew

This poem refuses to start. It’s cold 
as hell. I turn the key again and no,
the poem will not start. I pop the hood,
lean in. The battery is dead. I open
the Times, go to the obits. There it is —
dead. I push the poem out of the garage
and sit behind the wheel. It starts
to sleet. I blow the horn. Silence.
I check the glove compartment.
Find gloves. They still fit.
A cop knocks on the glass, motions
for me to roll down the window.
This your poem? Yes, officer.
License and registration.
I pat my empty pockets.
Step out and keep your hands
where I can see them.
Cracking the door, I turn the key
once more and the poem starts! I gun
the engine, screech off, fishtail
onto the street. The cop's in my rear view,
tasering himself. I don’t know where
I’m going. The ice makes the road
shine. It is dangerous. I like it.
I’m gaining speed.

Peter Krumbach is the author of Degrees of Romance (Elixir Press, 2024), the winner of The Antivenom Poetry Award. Find him online at peterkrumbach.com.

BACK

ISSUE tHREE HOME