Family Planning in the Twenty-Second Century

Scrub out mutated genes
giving rise to mutated bodies,
bodies we don’t want
circulating in our better society.

Lewy minds and cancered lungs
float in history, twenty-first century
deaths we’ve vaulted beyond.

Are we ready? Start
with the perfect embryo.
Cells divide
into an engineered self

offering cognitive muscle
and equidistant attractiveness.
This will be our son.
We’re no chickens.

Do you want college achievement
or adaptable intelligence? A love
for ghost peppers and ghost stories?
Wisdom in alleyways?
Fluid improv on the jazz floor?

In the reflection of a customer
picking a rooster to consume,
we pick the pure blueprint
promising sidewalk punch.

 

Keith Mark Gaboury earned a M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College. His poems have appeared in such publications as Poetry Quarterly, New Millennium Writings, and on the podcast Who Do You Think You Are? Keith is a poet and preschool teacher in Oakland, California.

 

 

 

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