I see a sense of survival of the fittest, but the obstacles are imposed by humans, not nature. It feels more like an attempt to identify adversity and explain human response to it. Only humans, the “we”, are in a losing game either intrinsically or by the restrictions imposed upon them by whoever is doing the testing, so we resort to do nothing or abandon attaining ideals.

The persona hints that humans are capable, but he is not able, which makes it seem the obstacles are not insurmountable to all. This makes me doubt the use of ”we”. The flaw appears to be singular not universal. However, there is an attempt to universalize the persona’s inadequacies by using the opening “we”, and life and death, but I’m not buying that the heart of this piece isn’t a personal matter that would feel more poignant coming focused on a first or third POV persona. I suspect this piece would feel more consistent in tone if it focused on “I am not fit enough” rather than a flail of humankind.

“Tested” in line three feels like it could be improved. Pressured, blasted, assaulted, barraged, battered, etc.

Line four doesn’t feel right. React carries dual connotation, but it feels like we’re moving away from the science geekiness to gritty reality. What came to my mind was: We are test tubes,/lined row by row, waiting/to be pressured: abandoned/ in back alleys amidst/ drunkards and braggarts/bored on Friday nights./ But even there abandoned feels wrong because it mirrors a power behind nature or chance. Lost might be better, but I’m not sure I get the whole notion of who is testing the test tubes. Is it nature, as evoked by the Darwin reference, or is it a god?

I love the opening and the metaphor of test tubes, so I’m a little bummed when “we” transitions away from that image to people. That’s fine, though. It just means I liked it and it worked well, so I wanted it to stay around longer.

The last lines feel awkward. I understand the notion that life is consistently leading towards death, so we are all dying in one sense; but how does death share the same relationship? Death is finality, yet the “ pay” is persisting. It doesn’t make logical sense to me, so I can’t understand the last claim or accept the final words. But looking at the last words I don’t know what exactly we don’t do. Is it living and dying, or is it living and death? If we don’t “ pay”, and the pay is dying, then what we don’t do is “living” and “death” (which don’t grammatically go together the same way life and death, and living and dying do). It just isn’t connecting to me, and I’m left feeling like the piece doesn’t strike the universal resonance it was aiming for.