The Real Housewives of the Anthropocene
By Alicia Rebecca Myers
Kim says the demise of plants hurts her feelings. After Harper’s lunar mining business goes under, Isla bitches in her confessional, she can’t even keep a thin atmosphere. Evelyn’s husband’s cheating scandal briefly unites the women. Kim gives her a digital copy of the genome of an extinct crested gecko, and together, they drink reserve gin in Evelyn’s luxury bunker. The two make fun of Camilla for thinking desertification is a pop-up cakery. Harper gets addicted to Fusion Power diet pills, slurs on camera, “I wish paper were still a thing!!” Camilla’s teenage daughter hosts a seance; the wrong spirits come. Roz returns from overseas philanthropy with her maize charity, only to discover several ladies have raised money for sugarcane instead. Isla gets drunk, points a finger at Roz, screams, “automated slut!” Harper debuts her new Smart Shoe line with her new Smart Face. When the storm comes, they hire help to board up the windows of their gated community with blingy plywood. They listen to the wind. They ask not to film this part.
Alicia Rebecca Myers's poetry has recently appeared in publications that include River Styx, Sixth Finch, and Rattle. Her chapbook of poems, My Seaborgium (Brain Mill Press, 2016), was winner of the Mineral Point Chapbook Series. Her first full-length manuscript, Warble, was chosen by former Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg as winner of the 2024 Birdy Poetry Prize (Meadowlark Press) and will be published in spring 2025.