When I lived in Los Angeles, one had a spiritual obligation to cruelty. Ignore the unhoused. They chose their suffering before they were born. In the Bay Area, we are quite rational. Machines are sentient, and the sentient are machines. We optimize life for improved output. Meritocracy is natural selection. I see now the value in a soul, not an immaterial carbon copy of the individual, but something we are forced to share.

Nicholas Yingling is the author of The Fire Road (Barrow Street Press, 2024). His poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Poetry Daily, Pleiades, and The Adroit Journal. He lives in the Bay Area, where he teaches ESL.

I: @nicholasyinglingpoet