Gain of Function

Author: Chris Sylvester Publisher: H*d*ng Press (2022) These poems are occasioned by a world of expiring contexts (though the date of total expiration remains occluded, both goad and horror). Also the fact that said expiration unfolds, unremarkably, day by day. You know what I’m talking about. Their dates of composition cluster around the emergence of COVID-19, though the sense of desperation remains consistent whether they were written before or after that particular advent. Louisa demands that I (Chris) count how long she’s been underwater, but I’m writing this so I can’t. Given the going state of affairs, the anti-natalist position is undoubtedly correct; that is to say I can’t help but agree with it. Anyway, I fathered children and these poems are conditioned by that fact—intensely and obviously so. They're likewise formatted by the understanding that human extinction is clearly accomplished in advance and so the avoidance of procreation is itself premised on a fantasy (either of h