Seeming Space
where silence lies heavy …
blackbird’s beak a keepsake
deep in her spacesuit
some kind of interference
“… rodents thread
my persuade shoes …”
scab by scab Dr Anjellig
moves Undone Bridge
to Loss Hinges
in their blue sinstripe suits
with vulva
pockets
the snorting meadows …
tip-toe
through the pigslips
they’ll be forever children
till their cryosleep
ends
not a word
from Voltaire and Swift
since taking up on Deimos
fill your mind
to ride
the telepathic horse
after eating the pie chart …
silence descends
over the need for need
in each follicle
billions
of souls
the stars so spaced
seeming
space so dark
— John W. Sexton
John W. Sexton was born in 1958 and lives in the Republic of Ireland. His fifth poetry collection, The Offspring of the Moon, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013. His poem The Green Owl was awarded the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007 for best single poem, and in that same year he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry. His speculative poems are widely published and some have appeared in Apex, The Edinburgh Review, The Irish Times, Mirror Dance, The Pedestal Magazine, Rose Red Review, Silver Blade, Star*Line and Strange Horizons.
Editor’s Image Note: Hubble Uncovering the Secrets of the Quintuplet Cluster (Credit: ESA/NASA)