By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"Near Future" imagines a stripped-down world of slaughter, concrete, and rumor, then quietly chooses allegiance to a troubled woman anyway.
The opening image of a big bone after the last animal is apocalyptic without needing spectacle. Around that ruin, the woman reads danger accurately while hostile voices seem to move through the built world and even through her blood. The final line matters because it is not idealizing loyalty; it is choosing her with full knowledge of the trouble.
'Near Future' opens on a quiet apocalypse - 'Nothing but a big bone / after the last animal / slaughtered' - around which a woman reads danger accurately, looking 'out there' to say 'it's troubble' while hostile voices move 'behind her / back of concrete' and 'down / through her veins.' The closing turn refuses to idealize loyalty: even granting 'I guess you have / to live the truth' and that she has 'been down the road,' the speaker still chooses her with full knowledge - 'I think I'd stick with her.'