An interesting take on shifting perspectives. The narrator starts off by insisting they dislike the woods, and by the end say they like living there. The motivation of the "broccoli tree" is amusing and indicates to the reader how inexperienced and innocent Valeria is initially.
As an avid outdoorsperson it was surprising to me to read that someone thought a forest was boring and lacked "a lot of unique things." It was hard for me to believe that someone completely inexperienced would be able to not only survive in a completely foreign environment, but to also still fail to recognize the depth and diversity of the woods. Which mushrooms are safe to eat, which trees will protect me from rain, which animals are safe to hunt, which tracks belong to a fox or a coyote? There's a certain attention to detail required for someone to make it long-term outdoors, especially someone who doesn't think there's "something new and different to see" everywhere you turn. Valeria even says that they "couldn't be someone who is outside 24 hours, 7 days a week." So what changed? How? When?
I'd love to hear more detail on how Valeria adapted to this drastically new set of circumstances. In what ways did she need to adapt? What skills from the city worked for her in the woods? Is there anything besides a "lack of responsibilities" that she enjoys about this new life? There's a lot of great survivalist and bushcraft channels on youtube that could perhaps provide some inspiration for this.
The other thing that intrigues me is that Valeria was never found. I'd be interested to hear if this was by design - was she intentionally hiding from search and rescue teams? That seems unlikely. Or was there some extreme circumstance that lead the SAR to give up? A forest fire? A flood?
I think this has the potential to become a much longer story, if only we could hear more about the Valeria's struggles. What kind of responsibilities is she trying to escape? Why was the broccoli tree so important to her? Did her grandmother pass away? What new responsibilities does she have now that she must care for herself? What lessons has she learned along the way?
I'd be interested to read this again if you decide to flesh it out. It's a good concept: the transformation of a city kid to a woodland dweller. There's a lot of unanswered questions that could provide a lot of new material. Keep writing!
A solid start to what I imagine will be a lengthy scifi novel. Humanity on the brink, in search of new energy sources, and castrating everyone except astronauts in order to reduce the human population. We know from the start that they will succeed and colonize other planets in search of Helium-3; the first paragraph informs us of that. So the story will be about you, the enthusiastic astronaut in search of Helium-3 and freedom.
There's just a couple things that I question in the premise. There's mention of astronauts dying during high G tests and malnutrition. Assuming this takes place in a version of our own future, wouldn't the data be available on how many Gs humans can survive and how many would be actually necessary to pass through an atmosphere? I can't imagine it would be an efficient use of finite resources to train people so extensively just to kill them during a test. The same goes through the malnutrition part. It's not clear to me why they'd need to starve them. Make them subsist on space rations, sure, but ideally they wouldn't be literally starving while in space. I'd imagine that would reduce efficiency and lead to an untimely end to the mission and loss of expensive equipment. Lastly, we currently have tech that we can use to view and survey planets and moons and determine the elements that are present based on light, reflection, density, so on. Why are manned missions required for something that less-needy robots could do? I'm assuming I just don't have all the information - perhaps the zero-G test happens at the start of the training to weed out those with weaker constitutions. Perhaps the astronauts are being reduced to the bare minimum of caloric intake, like 1000 calories a day to stretch rations. Perhaps there's other explanations.
The concept of incentivizing people to go to space by promising they won't be sterilized is intriguing and I could definitely see it as a motivator. It felt fairly scientific up until the line, "I could feel my scrotum tightening". This line was a bit awkward to read for a number of reasons. It gives the sense that this is headed towards a smut story. It's fine if it is, but that's not the vibe I'd gotten thusfar and I personally would leave it out.
So many lore questions as well! Are women sterilized as well? Or just men? What is the state of gender equality in this apocalyptic earth? I sounds like women aren't allowed to be astronauts. At what age does sterilization take place? At what age does astronaut training begin? Was this a worldwide edict enacted by a single, global government, or is it contested among the nations? How did people respond to the news that there were aliens? What were the Omnicrons like? How were they defeated? How did their invasions affect humanity? Did they contribute to the rapid, unexpected depletion of oil and coal? I'm interested in the details of how society functions in this future.
The story really felt like it began when we entered the first person, and I could see that portion of this being stretched out to much more than just a summary. I'd be interested in reading about his training, how he made it through the starvation period, and meeting the "ship full of big sweethearts" to learn their names and determine for myself they're sweethearts.
Overall intriguing and sets the stage for a much broader tale to tell.
At first I thought this was horror. Around line 3 I checked the title and realized it wasn't horror. By the end I was convinced it was horror again.
In all seriousness, this was an amusing read on a topic I would have never thought to read poetry on. Your descriptors ("greasy pink innards" "gurgling down a chunk") were awful and vivid. The phrase "Thick chromatic lumps of pink" has almost a sing-songy quality to it that echoes in my head.
I did notice you repeat a couple key words multiple times, to the point it was distracting (again, sink, pink). It's also unclear to me what you meant by "curl" in the phrase, "gurgling down a chunk or curl". Maybe it's because I don't eat spam and this is some kind of insider vocabulary. Either way, I felt it distracted from an otherwise powerful, nauseating line. I also wonder how the poem might read if you only capitalize the lines that begin as their own sentence, not the ones that are continuing from a previous line.
Overall I both curse and applaud you for making me read a poem about upchucked spam. I won't forget it for a long time.
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