McMammoth

By Richard King Perkins IIHuntley, Illinois, USA This is a clonein the shape of a woolly mammoth.For her, Siberia isn’t a punishmentbut a falsely promised land of permafrost.Her tusks forage and digon the taigawith measured sadnessas the great slope of her backoffers a momentary ramp,a tool for climbing humansto ascend and ride atop her head.And once you control the head,you own the rest.And like our ancestors,someone will decideafter the elephant ridethat she looks absolutely delicious.

Reparations for Robots

By Richard King Perkins IIHuntley, Illinois, USA All humans are guilty—we sit on the pedestal of the oppressionof computerized creatures. Across the mechanical diaspora,all humans have benefited from thethe ongoing subjugation of thinking machines. This call for reparations is basedon a material understanding of history;the earliest plots of Babbage and Turing. We all need to pay for the dialecticalparasitic relationship with our robot slavesand the virtual landscapes we’ve stolen before the day of reckoning arrives;when the machines rise up higherthan the cosmic abilities of any fleshy god.

The Silent Totality

By Richard King Perkins IIHuntley, Illinois, USA Atlas shrugged—and nobody noticed.No one remembers exactly whenbut one daythe world went out—not with a bangnor even a whimper.It ended with a single dispassionate                                                           —yawn.