April 2020


poem27 Apr 2020 08:14 am
NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); credit for CTIO Image: N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley) and NOAO/AURA/NSF - http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/16/image/a/

Katherine Inskip

The sounds, the lights, the circles on the plinth,
the holographic sparkles in the pause
between destructive read-out's start and send?
They're there for no-one's benefit but yours.
A sleight-of-mind that draws the eye away --
like oxygen on tap to calm the doomed --
they do their work efficiently and well,
and no-one thinks to question what I do.

Coordinates are programmed in advance.
The airlock doors are tested on the hour,
and climate, pressure, atmospheric mix,
the vents and drains, the maser-beam array.
You trust the databanks that store your soul,
that lase you through the mazed and empty dark,
then from those exabytes of vacuum, weave
your new and unadulterated self.

Behind my screen, I wave you on and in
and reassure the rookies as I can.
It’s safe, well tried and tested. Then, the lie:
you shall not feel the moment when you die.

The sounds, the lights, the circles on the plinth,
my hollow-hearted witness through the cams,
between constructive write-out's start and end:
the souls that wear your bodies are not yours....

I make the call, unleash the lethal flames
that cleanse abhorrent spirits from our realm.
They do my work efficiently and well
and no one asks what happens in their death.
Redundancy is programmed at the core.
Another airlock test is scheduled in.
The vents are flushed, the atmosphere restored,
and once it’s all reset we'll try again.

Across the frothing turbulence of space
you trust your soul to ride coherent light
and hope the quantum noise of all your dreams
will be enough to bring you back to life.

Behind the scenes, we plausibly deny
our tech-speak claiming 'normal, small delays'.
Though all's scoured clean where corpses used to lie,
I can't un-see the moments when you die.
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poem14 Apr 2020 02:55 pm
Apple Tree with Red Fruit by Paul Ranson

Colleen Anderson

 A bulimic knows
 there are two ways to consume
 one is not to eat at all
 the other, take the world 
 into yourself sins, joys, pains
 the full sensory experience
 not grow fat on it but purge again 
 and again... for balance, feel despair 
 so that joy is all the richer
 when devoured guiltlessly again
 
 Starved for love or a word of praise
 Snow White sought out something to fulfill
 took the path of runaways, of precocity
 of survivors from broken homes
 not all girls who run endure or find peace
 she managed lodgings with men of splintery mien
 striving to be gentlemen all the same
 but good intentions and preordained destinies 
 can still go astray
 
 In hunger to fill a need, hide her shame
 Snow White was tempted by an apple
 the oldest crop seeded in memory 
 a blush of thought on the tree of life 
 or abundant knowledge of good and evil
 she saw in the mirror, the roseate lie
 herself a hybrid queen filled with envy
 who tried to join the halves together
 obliterate the exposed bruised side
 
 Those apples had special weight
 ever since time began
 the first fruit a sweet tease leaving
 the bitter aftertaste from the core
 a weighty illicit craving, a dark desire
 for savoring a beginning neverending
 for going beyond safe borders
 
 How could she resist
 in the end her wish bloomed true
 the desire of all who seek eternity
 an apple poisoned with all of time
 Snow White bit and chewed and choked
 then fell into a suspended world
 that her predecessor had long known
 a goddess once, who may have dropped
 just as windfall apples do 
 from the wind's lecherous touch
 
 Idunn of the golden apples won hard
 harvester’s knowledge and full of power
 she never punished, only rewarded the gift
 that kept on giving, endless life, youth, beauty
 Gods grow bored when millennia pass
 Idunn and the Norse sailed onto other realms
 leaving a distillation, an elixir
 a breath of remembering in the apples of Midgard
 
 Fairy tales are the memories of gods long gone
 wishes of mortals for what can never be
 Snow White frozen in her world of in-between 
 received the eternal gift but not as it once had been
 She was stuck between the realms
 neither dead nor alive, preserved for all time
 until the day some random prince
 heimliched her back to life
 
 She has spent an eternity sandwiched
 into film and print, but wanting neither
 immortalized yet seeking always seeking
 an apple that will give her a taste 
 of a love that’s not foreseen
 that destiny cannot touch, something natural
 that happens on a whim
 like apples falling from a tree 
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