Category: Dispatches From the Near Future

Juvenile Federation of Genetically Modified Youth

.Reading time 50 minutes.

by Joseph Rakowski
Featured Art: National Defense by William Tasker

My daughter was just 10 years old when she arrested me. She broke down the door to the bathroom and caught me in the tub using her neuro-banger headset. She placed the tip of her Dodo Taser just above the water, and declared I was in violation of rule one and two of the Constitution for Lost Adults, enacted six months ago by the Juvenile Federation of Genetically Modified Youth. This meant, she had nailed me for illegally using her headset to browse Appearance-Exchange, a restricted social media site that was no longer accessible to anyone over the age of 18—adults.  Read More

reCAPTCHA

.Reading time 1 minute.

by Jiordan Castle
Featured Art: Dry Brook by Jervis McEntee

Read by the author.

 A week to go &

still no word

on where they’re

sending him

this time. If you

search my father’s

first name, last

name, sex, &

race in a

federal inmate

database, you’ll see Read More

“Uber” and “Alexa”

.Reading time 2 minutes.

by Ruth Bardon
Featured Art: Street Cart by Egon Schiele

Uber

The silent dot on the screen

moves and stops and starts again,

an ant sniffing out my scent,

 

determined to find me,

ambassador of an omniscient eye

that never looks away,

Read More

The Uber Diaries

.Reading time 36 minutes.

by Kyle Minor
Essay originally published in New Ohio Review Issue 24
Featured Art: Evacuation by Corran Brownlee

Indianapolis, Indiana. Somewhere near Keystone Avenue and 62nd Street my iPhone pings. A college student from Hyderabad, India. He is pleased when I tell him he’s my first customer. He tips me two dollars.

*

I pick up my second customer in front of a bar in Broad Ripple. He gets in the front seat. His hair is grown to thigh length, and he is on some kind of party drug that makes him want to touch things.

“Please stop rubbing my arm,” I say. He apologizes.

Near Rocky Ripple, he takes off his shoes and socks and rubs his bare feet on the windshield.

His feet leave little rabbit marks. He is a large man with very tiny feet. When I drop him off at the donut shop, he doesn’t leave a tip. Read More

Landscape with iPhone

.Reading time 3 minutes.

by Emily Mohn-Slate
Originally published in New Ohio Review Issue 25
Featured Art: Walk Behind the Beach Huts by Barbara Peirson

I don’t want to tweet this thought that comes to me

as I’m changing my daughter’s diaper—don’t want to pull my phone

out of my pocket—my phone is growing a tree right now

with an app called “Forest” that rewards me for not looking

at my phone—and what I want is for a thought to enter,

Read More

Poems About Facebook

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Featured Art: The Toilers of the Sea by Albert Pinkham Ryder

Facebook Sonnet

by Tanya Grae
Originally published in New Ohio Review Issue 21

Someone thinks I’m beautiful again

& likes posts of my day, comments.

I stifle smiles & feel uncontainable—

bungeed off ether & the interplay. Read More

Recovery

.Reading time 44 minutes.
by Max Bell
Story originally published in New Ohio Review Issue 25
Featured Art: Recharge by Corran Brownlee

 

Two Weeks 

Lisa left when the droid arrived. There was no period of transition, no time for Richard to adjust. After she signed for it, she carried it into the living room, set it down in front of him on the worn shag, and began saying her goodbye. Like the stitches in his hip, she was disappearing, dissolving in front of him. He did not, however, rejoice in the knowledge of her impending absence. Read More