The Outer Space in Me
after Major Jackson
The outer space in me, weightless,
devoid and dark yet mottled with stars,
planets, moonlight, feelings, memories,
colorful eruptions, and all kinds of forces.
From Earth, the outer space in me looks cold
and crystalline, intentional and chaotic.
What you can’t see are the crabs, cobwebs,
sensuous octopi with basset-hound eyes,
purring servals that can maul
without warning, like Carl K. in third grade.
Children all over the outer space in me
love to draw sunflowers and pterodactyls.
Astronomers in me have unremitting curiosity,
which I stoke with a kaleidoscope of asteroids,
twinkling dapples, chaos, and prospects
of pleasure domes and sci-fi empires.
Entrepreneurs in me are racing to develop
clean energy and other miracles from
the quantum mechanics in me.
I was not born with an outer space in me.
It formed to fill the blank canvas left after
pop-culture tornadoes blew away the statues
of God and angels that Catholic school
sculpted in me. Now, math and art fill
the outer space in me, leaving no room
for religion and other static architectures.
This is why I keep my stars fiery and far apart:
to allow every species in me to evolve
whatever they will without interference,
to build their own inner outer space or fade out.
All Roads Lead to Wetmore
It’s different, growing up in a dead-end alley,
one lane to a masonry wall. Anyone parking
on Wetmore could end up hemmed in
with no way out. I was blocked
by first grade—a cart without a route.
I learned how to count—everything
but murders. My first victim,
a fly or snail, head or heart—
I don’t know. We’re all just trying to get well.
No one counts the germs he massacres.
I answered their prayers—
a cookie crumb, a hot flood, firecrackers.
My prayors, my godmakers.
No one prayed to me like those ants.
Who else would listen if I did not?
Dear ants, if you still hear me,
try, try to understand.
Lightheaded
There are ants and starlings and they are shining. Oceans
and the surf licking the beaches are shining. Our glass
anniversary is shining. So are the teeth of the boar
grinning on a platter. Shining, too, is the see-through
bowl we live in. A stalwart moon is shining so intently we
can’t see its dead seas. Platypus are shining. Manatees.
Brontosaurus. Fire ants. As if we evolved to see shining.
As if our tears are shiny. Stars in the sand, stars to the
sky, stars for pillows. Here comes a drooling Saint
Bernard clenching the stem of a stargazer lily. There goes
a skinny monkey in a star-studded beret riding a startled
pug. You’re riding Pegasus with stardust for stirrups. I’m
flying towards you in a wisteria cape which I rip off and
shoot like a star. There are meteorites burning in the
darkness above and shiny starfish piercing the air around
us, crashing, puddling into star-shaped galaxies. There
are the starfish I feel when I’m with you, and those I feel
afterwards. Look there! Our six-bedroom lodestar that
never loaded is shining. Our stark truth is neither here
nor there: my touch starving for yours, my eyes starstruck
in your absence, our silence hot and sweet as mustard.
Star spelled backwards is rats. We are two rats orbiting a
shiny ant. (Rats live on—no evil star.) There are
constellations to like, platypus to hype.
Kenton K. Yee’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Plume Poetry, Threepenny Review, TAB Journal, I-70 Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, McNeese Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Mantis, Indianapolis Review, Sugar House Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Ecopoetry Anthology: Volume II, and Rattle, among others. Kenton writes from Northern California.
Header photo by Triff, courtesy Shutterstock.
