Adrift

This poem was originally published both at Apiary Magazine which is a print and online literary magazine based out of Philadelphia, and at Marathon Literary Review, the literary journal out of Arcadia University.

Adrift
NGC 5555 sighs quasar. Another child slips past event horizon. She tastes carbon. Dark matter creaks into the space within her arms.

* * *

All her sisters red shift. Time creates space between matter. She cries supernova. None will be left to hear her.

* * *

Birth is pain. She is running out of matter. Another brown dwarf. She yearns to devour them. Forget them. Basks in solar winds. Weeps nebulae.

* * *

A shape in the void. Growing larger. Another spiral? An elliptical? An old one made beautiful by its flawed shape? Time will create a closing of space. She will know.

* * *

It is another spiral! A sister. Large. More than 300 billion. What will they talk about? How close will they pass? She giggles red giants.

* * *

They will touch! To feel another for the first time. What will it feel like? Will it tickle? Will it sting? Will it be love?

* * *

So close. She yearns to stretch across the void and draw her in. The other has said nothing. She will say something. She will.

* * *

Pain. Arm broken. Disfigured and stretching into the void. Insides filled. The other is too big. She is losing mass. She is losing children. She is being consumed. She does not want to be consumed. She is afraid to be consumed.

* * *

Insides displaced. Viscous dust trails her fleeing sister. She hadn't said a word. She hadn't said a single word. There is no filling the emptiness. It will always exist now. A reminder of her pain. She weeps.

* * *

A new life. Conceived from matter exchange. Another reminder. A G type yellow child, nestled in a system of variety. A blue egg.

* * *

She smiles evolution. The child brings life in its wake. Rests, cradled in a crooked arm. Time creates voice. They speak to her. They call to be heard. She listens.

Two Poems About Work

These two poems come from my days of work at Michigan State University. They were originally published at Silent Things an online literary journal.

The Pita Pit
Fluorescence ebbs into the night
void with a new moon.
Neon ‘Open’ wades into
darkness, swims
to the bob of streetlight shadows.
Silence crashes into
bzzing light bulbs
iPod static hss
A squawk from the griddle
as lunch meat remnants take flight
towards the cooler
droning on
and on.
Sitting upon a cabinet top,
*Slouching Towards Nirvana*,
A car Dopplers past
dragging phone and doorbell’s absence
to street.
People pay for this.

Toxicated
7 AM is last call at Denny’s.
The smoking section dissipates.
Downing the last of sixteen coffee cups,
shuffling the remnants
of fifty four sugar packets,
thirty two creamers,
incantations
to no
sleep
the world is twenty six hours
tinged.
Twenty two Marlboro Smooth cigarette butts
form a constellation
of promised addiction
weeping
Ink,
the Dream of a Common Language
bringing words to paper,
in pursuit
of the one
true
lie.
Crumbs line a greased plate,
six onion rings, four mozzarella sticks, three chicken tenders,
food to get by until the 10 A.M.
post class
cup of coffee.
As the sun fills yellow stained windows,
my body rises,
finds its keys,
attempts to drive
into the self
and learn
something,
anything.