The Future of Sex is Now
Jenny Maaketo
where Man & Woman have no need to leave a will. Breaking some unwieldy seal, XX & XY surpass sexes & become The Speed Of Light—succeeding ceaseless—beyond the bondage of body land. Senses will themselves to be self-willed, no longer tethered in all direction to stitched stretched leather & whether or not 2B or not 2B distills to Descartes. I think data, therefore I am data. Where the World of Tomorrowis today, all uncles have taken noses and put them in iPhones, along with the opposable thumb. Nothing opposes the earnest of our human furnace. The Us of Tomorrow is at hand! Our eyes are asterisks or asteroids: windows punctuated by stars of fire. Our mouth is smile or frown: 1 of 2 option parentheses up or down. Our voices are prerecorded. Together we are 1 voice of a man once named Black Hole, & thankfully we don’t know what the word name or black or hole or word means anymore. Today we see speechless. Today we speak insignia. Today we seek emblem. Our name is Emogi 1, 2, 3, & to infinity! & beyond, our expressions send messages along side pockets—silent but for a single tintinnabulation. & as for sentiment, Love is no longer continuous feeling, because luckily feeling has been discontinued—all but for the ultimate emoticon: an empty outline of the symbol once known as the heart now toppled over on the side of forgotten, long forgotten it’s actually the silhouette of a prostitute’s ass—propped, perched & primed for man mounting. & thankfully, Man has been discontinued. The Last Man—saved for posterity—is now on display. The rest have been repurposed & uploaded to The Social Network—where hyperlinked tweets advertise 1 request cloned ad infinitum: 1+1 mainframe seeks another 1 for artificial copulation. A lick on the bit is a click on the link. A suck on the stuck key is a grip on the last external drive. Inserting the C into the V, or the C into the A, or the V into the V is replaced with technology so cutting edge, one must be careful not to esc, as keys press Hard pound Enter delete Enter shift Control F. ALL CAPS data ENTRY sent AGAIN and AGAIN and AND COMING—is a call dial tone outmoded. No one picks up. No one answers on the other end of bodies. No one calls for the other end of flesh. Success. We are left with progress. The culmination culled from what was once us under skin is now kept in glass screens—some cracked, some pristine. And every heart is a cursor—… … …cycling… … …cycling… …
Jenny Maaketo (she/her) is a neurodivergent poet, psychiatric nurse, former professional actor, and first-year poetry candidate in the MFA Creative Writing program at the University of Mississippi. She was named a finalist in the 2023 Michelle Boisseau Poetry Prize and runner-up in the 2022 Patty Friedmann Writing Competition. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Cordite Poetry Review, Bear Review, The Peauxdunque Review, The Madison Review, Ponder Review, Gris-Gris, Cathexis Northwest Press, Host Publications, and Francis House among others. She lives in Abbeville, Mississippi on 66 acres with her husband, newborn son, six chickens, four dogs, two cats, and lots of love.