John James’s “Future Perfect”

The LARB Quarterly no. 45, “Submission,” presents a new poem by John James.

By John JamesJuly 9, 2025

• LARB Lit

• Poetry

This poem is a preview of the LARB Quarterly, no. 45: Submission. Become a member for more fiction, essays, criticism, poetry, and art from this issue—plus the next four issues of the Quarterly in print.

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Future Perfect

Night exists, night
exits. Objects
spin and then they
don’t. Thus falls
from Newton’s law:
there is this world
and this only. That is,
there is no Mars, no
plan B. No second-chance
planet to escape to.
There is your foot
on the ground and the ground
beneath it. There is
the proof of the red
balloon. There is
the mantis that cradles
 the head of a wasp, gorging
on its neural curve,
and the earth, softened
for potting, prepared
to hold your
soporific matter
as in the proverbial
ether it unravels, as
the soil slowly
burns. Each night I lay
the children down to sleep.
Each day, the sun
explodes. Magma surges
in the veins of caves,
and seabed faults, jammed
with the mesh
of particulate plastic
(origin a swirling
patch in the Pacific, origin
the polished
counters of my kitchen)
open with the force
of moving continents.
In the garden, a spider
spins its mind
between stems
of overwintered
fruit. Photons
batter the barely
visible silk. The world
wobbles just
a little on its axis,
bleeding orange into
an uncut sky, bending
toward bright.

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Featured image: Vasily Kandinsky. Houses at Murnau, 1909. The Art Institute of Chicago, Bequest of Katharine Kuh (1994.33). CC0, artic.edu. Accessed July 3, 2025. Image has been cropped.