by Stacey A. Gibson

Bhong Bahala, *Untitled*, digital photograph, 2024. Courtesy of Unsplash.

Shortage

Stacey A. Gibson | AUG 2025 | Issue 48

There is a shortage of farm workers to push the foodlike substances from factory to checkout lane.

There is a shortage of workers in the tech and science industries so there will be no shortage of those temporary visas.

There is a shortage of people who teach children.

There is a shortage of people to fight fires in Los Angeles.

There is a shortage of attention spans.

There is a shortage of manufacturing workers.

There is a shortage.
There is a shortage.
There is a shortage.

Certainly, there is another way to present these shortages in a wider matrix of truth and consequence. For now, we stay narrow and tight. If we look at the California fires long enough, we really can see the cataclysmic erosion of infrastructure we hope not to happen to us. One might miss the bitter water running through pipes and into kitchen sinks. Ask the people in Flint, Michigan about what lives in that water. The LA sky is fluorescent. The air is angry. And sad. Lungs are different in Los Angeles, I suspect. Rents certainly are too. My long time friend who lives in LA texted me: 3 beds/2 baths that rented for $6,000 per month…now $15K per month.

And when the hydrants coughed air, the fire department, the governor, and some other phantom players went to the jails and cut a vicious deal. My word not theirs. Imprisoned men became firewalkers. Their compensation was between $5.04 and $10.84 per day. Meanwhile the family who privatized California’s water and diverted thousands of miles of waterway charges the state millions of dollars for its own water. Both acts are somehow legal; paying $10 a day to prisoners to fire dance as billionaires hold water hostage.

Stacey A. Gibson enjoys tales well told and continues to create her own no matter how nervous she gets in the writing process. Her writing has appeared in English Journal, Uncommon Bonds, and Carnegie Hall's AfroFuturism Festival. Her TED Talk focuses on the courage to slow down in the midst of interconnected crisis. Her sense of humor is wry and her not-guilty pleasures include sitting still, cooking delightful meals, riding her bike faster than she should (she wears a helmet!), and working on writing projects, especially the ones which most scare her.