Options for Your Afterlife
after Franny Choi
REPLICANTS | ROBOTS | HOLOGRAMS | ALIENS | |
Investment | you must kill someone daily | you will never learn emotions | you must always display ads on your face | your sister will try to kill you |
Appears as | human except for the eyes | blow up doll, aluminum skin, wire torso | digital tokens, AI slop, reverse tractor beam | mollusks, insects, cryptids, reptiles, swamp gas |
Modes of communication | gunfire, cityspeak | protocols, modulated soundwaves | lip-syncing, canned responses | telepathy, pheromones, screeching |
Created by | Philip K. Dick / Ridley Scott / Warner Bros. | U.S. military, Silicon Valley, Lego | software engineering interns, lasers | fears you cannot confront, God |
Risks | looks just like the real thing | difficult to repair | can never be held | parasitic |
Rewards | looks just like the real thing | industrial strength | easy to hide | protection |
Dreams of being | a child | a simple machine | hungry | loved, held |
Dawn Angelicca Barcelona is a Filipina-American poet from New Jersey. Her debut chapbook, Roundtrip, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2025. She won the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award (2022) and Epiphany Magazine's Fresh Voices Fellowship (2023). Her work has been published in Epiphany, Tampa Review, Reed Magazine, Atlanta Review, and BRINK. She holds an MFA in Poetry and an MA in English Literature from Northwestern University. She is an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Tin House Workshop, Sewanee Writers' Conference, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and the Fulbright Program to South Korea.
