NIGHTFALL
-after Asimov, Baldwin, Danielewski
Panic on a planet lacking the roar
of dark. Six suns and never a set.
You build a tunnel. You chant survival
while cities furnace and star-rockets rave,
horizons shrink to flame.
You have to play it
by ear
and pray
for rain.
Rain builds olive in a symphony.
Rain soldier steps. Rain keeps
a level head and calculates.
What you can’t hear blends
into ionic unnoise,
uncolor. The electric gone bland
while you pray for that jump-cut plunge
to the end. While you implore
a glimpse of gray, meaning light and rise.
Gray, meaning echo and union.
Where there is no echo
there is no description
of space or love.
Indifferent stars, cease.
FAREWELL MEGAFAUNA
Avocado doesn’t know
the ground sloth is gone.
The seed drops nowhere.
We should drop dead
on demand, skin yielding
and blackened.
We should emerge preserved,
tenacious tar clinging
to joints. It’s complicated:
are we fruit or fossil?
Museum experts rebuild
a skeleton, understand
bones by the wires between.
We’re dioramas, we’re Indian
Peace Medals, we didn’t go.
Should we? Migrate? Plain,
red, mean. We condense
to summary, diverse fats,
a forearm-long claw.
A narrative for the picking.
heather hughes hangs her heart in Boston and Miami. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bad Penny Review<e/em>, Cream City Review, Grain, Hinchas de Poesia, Jai-Alai Magazine, and other journals. She MFA-ed at Lesley University and ALM-ed at Harvard University Extension. All her tattoos have wings. Poetry and other adventures at: www.birdmaddgirl.com.