Craig Buchner: The Future Looked Exactly Like We Thought
How The Carnivore Found Snow
A thin strip of bicep hung over his fork. Electricity in the twitching muscle. Meat almost crunchy. But more and more the carnivore read about vegetarians, vegans, and breatharians. Tomorrow, maybe he could delight in those bloodless deeds. But so fresh, he thought, the flesh tasted like snow tumbling through the sharp winter air. And that was more beautiful than any poem.
How the Carrion Lost Its Flavor
When natural disease was a problem,
People had curiosities.
I sit on the porch with a bowl of steel-cut oats
Watching two wolves eat a dog
That had been hit by a pick-up truck.
The future looked exactly like we thought,
Where everything wants for nothing.
Craig Buchner's work has been published by Tin House, Hobart, the Chicago Quarterly Review, the Cincinnati Review, and many others. In 2006, he won the AWP Intro Journals Award for his short fiction. Craig lives in Portland, Oregon.
