Is Anybody Out There?
WC Roberts
Here we are now, walking to the end of the world,
some of us pushing shopping carts, others carrying
suitcases duffels, and our children toting dolls that say
Mama, Mama is it a long way to go, yet?
We tell them, No, no, it won’t be long now
and we point to a cellphone tower on the horizon.
From there, we’ll call out, and again, if no one answers
we’ll know we’ve reached the end of the world,
we’ll know there’s no point in going on.
But we’ll go on anyway to the next cellphone tower
and to the one after that, from one horizon to the next
for as long as we are able—
and the children carry dolls that’ll say over and over,
Mama, Mama is it a long way to go, yet?
And we’ll tell them, No, no, it won’t be long now.
WC Roberts lives in a mobile home up on Bixby Hill, on land that was once the county dump. The only window looks out on a ragged scarecrow standing in a field of straw and dressed in WC’s own discarded clothes. WC dreams of the desert, of finally getting his first television set, and of ravens. Above all, he writes, and has had poems published in _ Silver Blade, Liquid Imagination, Strange Horizons, Apex, Space & Time Magazine, Shock Totem, Scifaikuest, Star*Line and others.