What Are We Going to Do Now?

We will lift with our legs and not with our backs, being careful not to hyperextend the knees.
We will put the socks and sneakers on the radiator to dry and make hot chocolate with miniature marshmallows.
We will cut out the spoiled part and slice the rest into the salad.
We will take every opportunity to expose the forces of irrational denialism and pseudoskepticism for what they are.
We will tell you what the real problem is.
We will stop the wasteful spending and make the hard choices.
We will not simply watch as thousands of veterans struggle with post-traumatic stress and risk finding themselves on the streets after the time of welcome-home parades and backslapping has ended.
We will reduce our carbon footprints and remove the oily tar from the treads of our work boots.
We will waggle our tails in simple joy in anticipation of the Master’s Return.
We will navigate the many ice floes that mark that long, fractured history of polar bear advocacy.
We will form a committee to kill click fraud before it kills us.
We will save the American woman from herself.
Even as medical science extends life, leaving us living in an age fraught with clinical and moral quandaries, we will alter a course that punishes Dad and tears at the family.
We will throw all this damn coal out the window. Look at the carpet! Look at the drapes!
We will find a way to get by without Andre.
We will convene the Economic Resource Council Board of Directors, talk in circles, and decide nothing.
We will plant flowers in the tank, a far better use.
We will learn to love again, to open our hearts to another and bare our skin to strange caresses.
We will circle the wagons and keep a vigilant eye.
We will flip the mattress, put the wet sheets in the washer right away, change his underpants, and read a story until his eyes begin again to flutter and close.
We will turn lemons into lemonade and sell the lemonade.
We will hoist a horn cunningly carved with rugged runes and drink deeply of the mellow mead, doughty yet awe-filled as we await our doom.
We will run in circles, flapping and headless, flabbergasted, our blood forming arabesques on the dusty ground.
We will sing our hearts out, loud and brave and strong, until they wouldn’t think of taking us all.
We will concretize the ineffable, package it in 24.7-ounce boxes, name it something familiar-sounding but new, and laugh all the way to the bank.
We will wait until the next one comes along, at 6:31.
One of us will steer while the other two push.
We will make the best use of accumulated pension funds when a long-time client reaches retirement.
We will do a lot of the hard work and still not get much respect, the Rodney-Dangerfield-coal-miner of the roster.
We will empty our buckets and fill them again. We will empty our buckets and fill them again. We will empty our buckets and fill them again.
We will row! Damn you! Row!
We will sit in the oriel and pine, as the rain makes tear-tracks down the window, green-black mold devours the ceiling and moths molest our wedding dress.
We will stay put with the car and ration our supplies until help comes. Help will come.
We will flip it over after the bubbles start forming.
We will stick a fork in it; it’s done.
We will go all in and pray like hell for a jack of clubs.
We will clean up the mess and then titrate 0.2 mL of the reagent into the eye sockets of Specimen #09226581.
We will find a new drummer.
We will call the plumber.
We will change the color scheme to salmon and sea foam.
We will slowly drive down every street in the neighborhood, calling her name over and over, holding a treat out the window.
We will simply apologize.
We will arrange the cadets at ten-foot intervals and comb the woods near which she was last seen jogging yesterday morning.
What can we do? We will stay by the phone and pray.
We will tell him it didn’t even mean anything, and besides, we caught him doing the same last year.
We’ll just use a little duct tape. No biggie.
We will check and recheck the files; it’s got to be in here somewhere.
We will ask Grandma if we can stay with her, at least until they clear out the debris.
We will find a different upcurrent birthstream in which to spawn.
We will sell off the small-cap, mid-cap, and growth shares and hold onto the large-cap holdings and value funds.
We will pick them off the floor and out of the fan and start resorting them.
We will support its—his neck and stop thinking about tripping and dropping the bundle headfirst on the cold tile floor.
We will board up the windows, make sure we have enough provisions, ignore the screaming outside, and play euchre until the sun rises again.
We will abide, gently abide, eventually survive.