a parisian colony on mars
can this really be our only option
tying balloons to cafes
& sailing them to that tiny spec of tangerine
packing soylent lunch boxes
birthing succulent fields
just to add a little color
resurrecting louis xvi’s great body
to rule limitless over new frontier
& what about cable?
will bunny ears grab enough static
to watch the remaining twenty-three minutes
of jeopardy?
out here condominiums stretch across deserts
people stand around, jaws
yawning at the strata, un-amused.
we have finally realized the limits of our knowledge
there is nothing to reach for
& even if there was, it would be overshadowed by this feat
the first colony on mars—
how thrilling it was—like
taking a bite out of a peach.
Jack Felice |
levelheaded: a parisian colony on mars
“Should we?” is a question people tend to ask too late. It’s a question that takes on a special importance when thinking about technological progress. Should we, for instance, create a hydrogen bomb? Should we remove the top of a mountain to get to a coal seam? Should we genetically engineer seeds and mandate their use? Should we colonize Mars? Even if the answers to some of the questions seem obvious, there are reasons people have not given an easy, emphatic, unpartisan “No!” to them all. That’s what makes this poem’s central metaphor a compelling look at what drives people into their dizzying, push-pull lives.
The poem is a simply structured description of Martian colonist concerns. The speaker reveals frustration with these concerns in the “really” of the first line. Mars is compared to fruit – first a tangerine and later a peach. The violence of the “peach” image is undeniable. Irrevocable damage is being done here. Mars is ripe for human consumption. This is a colony, after all – a Parisian colony. Paris’s cafes and the resurrection of “louis xvi’s great body” serve as a caricature of civilization. The poem conjoins a cultural apex with a technological apex. And what two things – culture and technology – could be more human?
But peeking through its sci-fi fun, the poem is also about the dangers of nostalgia. The speaker remembers “how thrilling” the first colony of Mars was. In a temporal twist, he has a glossy-eyed nostalgia for a moment that can only exist in the reader’s future. We know the poet is not nostalgic for the first colony on Mars (spoiler alert: he’s making the whole thing up!), so we can draw a clear border between the poet and speaker. The poem seconds the speaker’s condemnation of trivialities like “the remaining twenty-tree minutes / of jeopardy” or the “condominiums [that] stretch across the desert.” But it also condemns the speaker. Like those “yawning” people he criticizes, the speaker isn’t planning a voyage to Jupiter or developing new modes of utopian government. He’s composed a screed against his contemporaries. His approach is not unlike any of a thousand contemporary Facebook teardowns.
The poem interrogates the way we think about progress, technological and personal. Where do our feats of intellect, stamina, and spirit end? Is our hard work worth our potential irrelevance? Is technology a means of survival? Does survival mean cable television and self-congratulation? Will there be a time when everything we do will be “overshadowed” by the past? Perhaps in agreement with this poem, to this last question we give an easy, emphatic, unpartisan, “No!”
-The Editors