spaceship theory
himali singh soin
\1/
on my wasteland of transparent screens,
our waters are on fire and the cells of the old
trees are learning light again. research just by being
a body. oh wait, there’s mercury! it isn’t even full yet but
its humid honeyed drag gathers in the vectored corners of my clavicle.
isn't that where they say the heart begins?
but what does location matter now that even euclid
is a blip. here, mercury is transiting my lungs and it feels
like an inside-out déjà vu or a seasickness that stays: the lava in my spine
gleaming metallic, settling somewhere between here and the earth’s 23.5° axis.
i can hear the gods of stability sniggering in the back.
the geometeristicians should visit the existential helpdesk
before hurling a diagram like that at us: scratching a red skew line
across the world like tying a string around a man’s wrist in the middle
of his life promising him love. is this what they mean by hanging by a thread?
\2\
maybe seasickness is just nostalgia:
heart swaying from left to right and missing
the mark. missing who i could have been, forgetting
that matter and spirit are like tides and the moon. not-knowing how
how to calculate distance. how deep is this place? the z of horizon fading into the
horizon, the o hovering in place and the n like a horseshoe hung at an empyrean door.
missing we, missing the rupture
missing the missed collisions, missing the leaves
leaving us and our half-baked dreams even when dreaming
felt righter than real because the tilt made sense the way things in dreams always
do. Shapeless Space and Nebulous Time ran such a tight ship, we invited them here.
those who have it don’t know it and those who cannot afford it will be released
from it. this convex steel thing must measure something but i see stars
careening through time. the tilt is i therefore i don’t belong.
don’t be long, you winked. the tree is now far away.
obliquely a joke made in the service of relief.
/3\
i collect salt from the common ground,
which obliterates with the lack of mass or force.
still, gravity declares itself despite its exile from the books.
i am always amazed at how light it is. it clasps the one-legged wobble
by its shoulders, looks it in the eye and says, just wait right here, i got you.
Magazine for the Last Word, edited by Nadine Khalil.
