Aniara: 2021
Inspired by the movie and poem of the same name
Preface: Earth has become a wasteland. Humanity is fleeing, on lavish cruise ships, to struggling settlements on Mars. The Aniara is one such cruise ship. It carries 8,000 passengers. Shortly after breaking free of the Earth’s gravitational pull, the Aniara is knocked off-course by space debris, and, following a decision to eject the ship’s nuclear fuel, cannot return to its original flight path. The ship is on a trajectory that will take it into the depths of space, but, to preserve hope and stave off despair, the Captain lies, and says they will encounter a celestial body in three years, and when they do, they will use its gravity to slingshot the ship to Mars. To cope with the trauma, the passengers become dependent on a sentient computer program called the MIMA, which projects soothing images of Earth as it used-to-be directly into the passengers’ brains. After three years of more or less continuous use, the MIMA malfunctions--passengers begin to witness scenes of the various disasters that rendered Earth uninhabitable. During a technical check-up, dozens of passengers, desperate for the relief the MIMA provides, burst into its therapeutic chamber, and the MIMA, unable to continue processing the existential terror of 8,000 individuals, blows itself up.
The following poem depicts one man’s immersion in the MIMA, as it collapses and finally detonates. The MIMA’s dialogue is denoted with double-colons :: :: at the beginning and the end of each line. In the penultimate stanza, the four lines attributed to the MIMA are quotes from the film.
waterfalls and
water running over rocks
water carrying clumps of algae
water giving succor to hikers on a days-long journey
hands scooping up river-water with stainless steel bottles and then
water swirling, water ringing, water singing, and livid
sweat stalling on slicked-down eyebrows, and transparent
gunk dripping from dirt-smattered noses then funneled
between lips and onto flicking desert tongues, river-water
guzzling, guzzling, cooling, soothing, I can feel
my insides groaning as they slake off centuries
of blood-red silt.
this is what it means to touch the Earth
this is what it means to let the sunshine flood your face
and leave your years of pain writhing in serene seas until
they gasp and move no more
this is what it means to feel the air holding still
then move
as if to brush a lover’s hair behind her ear
as if to pat her cheek with a cold towelette
while your newborn daughter screams
in the doctor’s arms
over the rushing river
through the stoic trees
and carrying, carrying carrying
a constellation of droplets
from the waterfall.
this is the MIMA
these things are the prerogative, the light,
of the MIMA
MIMA, where all things melt away
MIMA, the silent confessor
MIMA, in you, are we reborn and reborn
MIMA, with you, each second is a new dawn, where
the newborn sun spills purple over the still-dark hills and
reveals the sky to be a prism waiting
for true-light to deem it memorable
away with the pseudo-light of the moon, the memory-light,
away with the pale unflinching memory-light of the moon
by you do we see the daytime swelling in a bird’s leery eye;
do we hear, with a profundity denied the prophets,
the leaves stirring across the neighborhood,
the distant tires rolling over broken gravel;
do we look upon the houses in our peripheries and say
“You exist, you are truly blue and truly green and your windows are portals
to something beyond this world.”
with you the vast silence
of the undisturbed Earth
is a balm.
it does not induce
a walking catatonia
where all good things are corrupted
by the bleeding wounds of the soul.
this is you, MIMA,
this is you.
my daughter is waiting on Mars.
a newborn screams in the doctor’s arms and blood
drips from the doctor’s gloves and a tiny
fist twitches as it arcs through the air.
Drowsy, heavy,
the drugs are taking hold.
You and I are one
we labored as one
I breathed for you
we breathed for us
we are cleaned with a damp towel
as our body completes the purge. Would you like to
spoken by a nurse with cream-colored curls and a voice
that sounds of cookies and warm milk
she should be beside an oven, waiting for the ticking timer to
ding hold him? this weight
so tender--a single flash destroyed Manhattan
be calmed gentle one--there were no bodies
let us wipe your mother’s blood from your face. He’s so beautiful
I as me kissed your forehead and pressed
a cold towelette against your cheek
I’m so proud of you
my stomach will deflate
I will return to normal
using the bathroom won’t be
so much of a struggle. Gurgle
gurgle, go the little one’s lips
Hot flash--children died in the fires of Manhattan
Nurse’s hands reaching down. Don’t go,
don’t go, it’s all right,
sleep, sleep now.
In sleep
colors, colors, red
bouncing off green bouncing off blue
there are children rolling in a meadow
and burying their noses in the heads of violets
and toddling toward bobbing dandelion-heads
I remember the dandelion, the white
tufts fleeing from my lips, the cool
stem, the spiraling spiraling
whiteness fading into the sky’s
burning blue
and the ocean petting the shore
shh, shh, it will be all right,
shh, shh outside the darkness
is gluttonous and feral
we will die between its teeth
spinal columns snapping and sending
final desperate signals
to spasmodic hands and spasmodic legs
and a spasmodic tongue fumbling a gurgling
scream. I know this
darkness. I feel it
when I’ve finished a bowl of algae blooms
and I’ve begun to slurp up the water
turned brackish and lethal
to the hungry green tendrils and
ever-probing roots. Steaks sizzling in saucepans
joyful splatter of cooking oils, gentle nudge
of the spatula, steaming mound of potatoes
and liquefied carrots, golden
droplets of corn, bubbling
champagne in thin-flute glasses, bellicose
laughter from a jovial man’s story
it shakes your frame and reminds you why
it is good to have meat on your bones--
here I am, sipping algae blooms
from a rotting wooden spoon.
My nephews have left me
My daughter is waiting on Mars
and forever shall she wait
Daddy can we have a dog up there?
Yes, Gloria, and we’ll name him Jiminy,
because he’ll help us to do
the right thing turn the ship around,
damnit, there must be something
you can do. My voice dies in the cabin
splatters itself beside my nephews’
bloodstains on the wall
on the floor
in the kitchen sink
they looked outside and saw
themselves floating unreal
inside the darkness and the darkness
slurped up their minds
so slosh the river round
lick the sugar crystals from your fingertips
feel the sweetness dissolve between your tastebuds
plunge your hand into Grandma’s birthday cake
throw snowballs at your cousins
spill milk on a linoleum floor and laugh
beside your high-school sweetheart.
rejoice in the ecstasy of sex.
heaving pumping laboring gloriously sweating
overpowered helpless breathless
pounding heart
fevered mind
satisfied kiss
::what makes you happy::
unending joy
::what makes you happy::
I sing my song atop the highest cliff
and listen to my voice soar through the canyon
and dissolve into sweet sweet memory
if I sing loud enough, there will be
a paleontological record
of my glee. My nephews died by knife.
One slashed his throat, the other his wrist.
Found them when I came back from the gym.
Men in white suits took the bodies away.
Scrubbed what I could. Red froth
oozing from a sponge. Coral reefs
bursting with iridescent life. Yellow
spades and massive parrotbeaks. Tantalizing
clownfish swimming through seductive
anemones. Eat me alive,
monstrous ocean, I want to feel
your salt in my veins, in my mouth, it leaks
from my eyes, theirs had no shimmer
no tear-tracks, they had no reason to cry,
their lives were lost--
they should have been playing basketball
on Olympus Mons, spelunking
in the Valles Marineris, building
snowmen of ice and iron dust, flirting
with women whose bodies are concealed
by spacesuits, the great equalizers,
we are all the same out here,
sacks of flesh in need of oxygen,
in need of ever-dwindling food.
I want to hold Gloria’s hand
as we walk through a field
of artificial flowers and play
with the light from
artificial buttercups.
We wander these halls and behold
pitiable works of art,
slapdash polygons and aimless lines
accompanied by the pitiable plucking
or bowing of horsehair strings pulsing
through the sound system.
We marvel at displays of savannahs swaying
beneath a blazing sun and watch
like a baby with her mobile
the plastic trains and plastic planes
going round and round a set of stars
blinking a thousand colors in a minute
and Mozart sprinkling down
holograms of women working looms,
spinning, threading, ankles bending,
slip-covered feet blistering while a piano
groans a melody from a distant planet undone
fire ash ozone erosion nuclear waste melting through centuries of fossils eradicating the dinosaurs again forever this time eradicating us there will be no memory of Paris it will all burn and melt and fall into the oceans of filth sucking at the teats of the continents and draining them dry. The
marshlands have crumpled, the flamingoes have perished, oxen lie panting in piles of dust, polar bears rot on the melting tundra, penguins drown in sulphurous seas, and grand cargo rafts lift what’s left of the human race up to the last of the waiting cruising ships, the last vessels of grandeur on
Mars the turnips barely grow, men cannot flaunt their muscles, women their breasts. Dance one last time beneath a diamond chandelier, drink one last time from the barrels of wine salvaged from the cellars of Louis XV, that will be the last cork you pop, that the last radio transmission, on Mars the iron air is dead, you will likely die of loneliness and be consumed by the Martian bacteria the first colonists jolted back to life. On Earth the graveyards lie abandoned, centuries upon centuries of human beings finally forgotten, the puddles in the coffins, the bloated bodies waiting to burst, these will be the final meals of millions upon millions of dessicated worms. Our soil feeds only mutant crops. My wife died when she bit into a piece of luminescent corn.
::This Exodus is now our Heaven.::
::This is where the sun’s light::
::becomes liquid gold.::
::It surges through your pores,
that magnificence.::
::When it is extinguished,::
::when your filth has been expunged,::
::you will be reborn.::
MIMA
A howl by the waterfall.
The moon explodes and crows turn to dust.
Across the western forests,
up to the northern seas,
fires dance their wondrous bacchanal.
Branches snap and trunks bow down--
bald eagle eggs drop,
drop
drop
and splatter youth
upon the grass-stalks
of the Earth.
My nephew’s neck gouged by red.
Failure dripped from the bedframe,
pooled at the drain of the ceramic sink.
What did they say before they died?
Make it quick, brother, or
goodbye, or
I love--
knife-blade slicing through skin,
piercing muscle walls and membranous
veins. A bead of blood, almost black,
then violent spurts of red? or cherry fountains
and cherry streams at once at once at once
::prolonging the very second when you burst::
failure to suture their souls
::how terror blasts in::
I am full of sin would you like to
::how horror blasts out::
I do not deserve this paradise I’m so proud
::how grim it always is, one’s own detonation.::
Gloria, Gloria,
I hope a good man
cradles your head and brushes
your fire-red hair.
Gloria, Gloria,
I’m sorry I cannot be there.
Angelo D’Amato, Jr. (he/him) is a writer based in Boston, Massachusetts. He holds MFAs in Fiction and Poetry from Lesley University and Albertus Magnus College. He has had stories and poems published by Passenger’s Journal, Calliope, Hare’s Paw Lit, Solstice Literary Magazine, New Note Poetry, the Tupelo 30/30 Challenge, and has a story forthcoming from the Oslo Writer’s League.