Finalist : Terrain.org 7th Annual Contest in Poetry
armistice
consider last autumn a war
and today the quiet restlessness
that follows. when the bricks must be relaid
but building comes second to sleep
and sleep comes second to wine.
certain nights we think it will heal
itself without our help. it’s possible
we’re right. better to sit and wait
for summer, sip slowly from our glasses
and shiver through the damp of February.
ignore our itching bones. we shouldn’t miss
the fighting or the losing, yet
we do. these days even the wind can’t decide
whether it’s moving or standing still.
“astronomers capture violent newborn star”
think the womb of space, or empty
pockets, their lint. some millions
of years between, & this just
a light show—do you see?
the butterfly net cast across
galaxies—asteroids & comets
slipping unseen through the mesh
& isn’t it such a mystery—the looking
back in time, the wrapping of the mind
around the word distant
the fact is, it’s all so much farther
than we realize. these days I find myself
mired in science. in the dark my blinds
cast shadows across angled walls,
supernovae teased from flashing blue
police beacons below. I lie next to you
or no one & it is almost a comfort
to know that we are made of quarks
that we are as much carbon as dying
stars & what I mean is, we’re all so
much farther than we feel, touching
but not touching in the afterglow
of a violent beginning—the purple-red
spread of all this universal burning
terraform
after “The Space Project”
i.
the cobweb in the corner of the ceiling
vibrates with the sound of it: all planets &
noise,
this music set to the universe’s static—the grandest
case of tinnitus doctors never diagnosed.
the spider eats a fly, wrapped.
I pick at the skin around my fingernails.
ii.
my ex-lover told me that one night on the porch
he heard three cockroaches mating & he saw it
as it happened, & the noise was
this slight, moist, exoskeletal rubbing—
like a tiny washboard in a tiny bluegrass band
like the predator
shrunk & slowed down to a crawl
& the finish was something profoundly unsettling
the shuddering
close of wing the dismount
the flushed, satisfied scurry
across bare feet
iii.
maybe all living things
vibrate at this same frequency
maybe we time our breaths & thrusts & chirps
to mete a harmony with unseen moons
with the gone stars we’re made of—
iv.
now the web is tensed & still; now
the spider lounges, bloated
now I am heavy
a gas giant now I rise
become a crumb in no atmosphere
v.
maybe we are so small so unbreathing
maybe we make no sounds
to the universe at all—
vi.
skin terraformed, I am
transformed
into some new earth ripe for alien life
I tell this to the universe & wait
& wait
I tell this to the universe
& it says nothing back
Katie Prince received her MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. In the spring of 2017, she will be serving as artist-in-residence at Klaustrid, in Fljótsdalsvegur, Iceland. Her poems have been published in or are forthcoming from Fugue, Smoking Glue Gun, Portland Review, and Gigantic Sequins, among others.Photo of Eagle Nebula by WikiImages, courtesy Pixabay. Photo of Katie Prince by Katie Prince.
