Bill Christophersen

B i l l   C h r i s t o p h e r s e n

T H E   N E W ,   I M P R O V E D   J E R U S A L E M

The calyx of state unfurls on schedule.

Leader after leader excuses herself.

Industrial quotas are passed and surpassed.

Cog spins cog; the state withers.

Every rooftop boasts a solar unit.

It is the heyday of omnibus legislation.

One lunches frequently with one’s adviser.

One’s future is never in doubt.

All the children are content.

Teeth everywhere are brushed with Crest.

The lumpen proletariat is fed and watered.

The elderly and derelict are taken care of.

Cynical attitudes are weeded out.

Happiness accrues through diligent self-adjustment.

Somewhere, a truculent cog gets stuck: They

retool him with their truncheons.

P I O N E E R I N G   T H E   N E W   F R O N T I E R

The die was cast, and now, you joked, the cast

must die so the credits could roll. Fingers

entwined, we watched them cut the cable. (So

much for fond leave-takings; cue the shot

of heavenly bodies pirouetting in the distance.)

All night we surfed the moon’s penumbra, the

booster rockets shucked like manzanita

seed pods in a late-September heat wave.

By twenty-four-hundred every affective

impulse had been stanched. Memory

was screening in black and white. Language

was a compromised code in rewrite. You

flicked your index absently at the remote and

said that we had done it after all.