HEART OF THE GALAXY

by Alejandro Escudé

The mystery at the heart of the Milky Way has finally been solved. This morning, at simultaneous press conferences around the world, the astronomers of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) revealed the first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It’s not the first picture of a black hole this collaboration has given us—that was the iconic image of M87*, which they revealed on April 10, 2019. But it’s the one they wanted most. Sagittarius A* is our own private supermassive black hole, the still point around which our galaxy revolves. —Scientific American, May 12, 2022.

It’s an engine, 

the scientists say,

a black Mustang

parked at the curb

in front of our house,

the Milky Way,

I’ve been there, 

lightless, eating up stars,

surrounded by fire

that cannot reach me,

speed of light,

the scientists say,

why the image is blurry

yet crisp

as can be,

such are the rules

we live by, the movie

inside the maelstrom,

the Papi

and the Mami,

a solitary mitt laying 

centerfield, a baseball 

tucked inside 

twirling 

as the cradle

of life in the universe spins 

26,000 light years away,

humans beings, Lucy

to the aliens, biological

Big Bang, Adam

and Eve to the bug-eyed

Greys

and the lizard man

who staggers out of an oval door

of a saucer-metallic

flying saucer,

time falling into time,

a spot on a boy’s foot,

beach tar, sound of waves,

salty air.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

SELECT COMMITTEE

by Claude Clayton Smith

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announces her appointments to a new select committee to investigate the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 1, 2021. From left are Rep. Elaine Luria, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, Rep. Pete Aguilar, Rep. Adam Schiff, Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Rep. Bennie Thompson. Rep. Liz Cheney also accepted Pelosi's invitation to join the committee. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP via abc news.

A singularity occurs but once in time

and space: the Big Bang, for instance;

 

or at a point of infinite mass density

where gravity distorts such time and space

into the final state of matter as it’s

black hole bound;

.

or when the derivative of a given function

of a complex variable does not exist, but

every neighborhood of which contains points

for which the variable does exist.

 

And now comes a new singularity:

a select committee to investigate

whether a house divided against itself

can stand, or if the point at which all

concepts that give life meaning

become irrelevant.

 

Professor Emeritus of English at Ohio Northern University, Claude Clayton Smith is the author of eight books and co-editor/translator of four others. His own books have been translated into five languages, including Russian and Chinese.

THE UNBELIEVABLE

by Anne Graue

Werner Jaisli constructed the 'ovniport' after claiming to have received a 'telepathic message' from aliens. Consisting of a circle of white and brown rocks shaped like a star, the unusual 'landing pad' measures approximately 48 meters in diameter and is situated in the small town of Cachi in the province of Salta. Image Credit: CC BY 2.0 nraliessi / Flickr via Unexplained Mysteries, August 28, 2017

Lights in the forest spun, burned the grass. The buzzing sound has never left my ears.

I wake up every morning exhausted, smell sulfurous fog, and know that a ship is in the distance,

maybe on another continent; could be here any minute, take me away, bring me

back. No one would be the wiser.

My mother listened to a radio

program that shared  earth's mysteries

I have always known that the Loch Ness Monster was real; I yearned to witness the head

and neck rising out of the water, a scaly throwback to ancient times. Now I watch Nessie

CAM,  find documentaries about aliens, giant sea monsters swimming in the waters

off  many coasts, and I believe those who claim to have seen these things so obscure and yet

so prevalent, even with a beer and bad camera in hand.

How can so many claim to see what does not exist?

Where are the giant squid?

Scientists create documentaries, separate fact from fiction, the wheat from the chaff, searching

for the monster under the bed, the Yeti in the Himalayas; Sasquatch, and the Zone

of Silence; the Chupacabra, in Mexico and parts of Texas, kills livestock, drinks blood, leaves

nothing but empty shells, carcasses. We seem to have faith in existence without evidence.

She said that someone in Russia found Hell, could hear the screams and suffering

with a device lowered to the depths of, well, Hell, under the earth's crust,

where it ought to be, where they said it was. 

So we believe that Sasquatch roams the Oregon forests, the Mothman climbed a bridge

in West Virginia, people have been abducted by extraterrestrials, returned naked to their homes.

Another day she told me Bigfoot traveled through dimensions so would never

be found; that is why he is elusive to capture. When he reappears he may be

a Yeti or he may be the man who claims that he was in the famous Sasquatch film

shown in every documentary. So there it is.

UFOs hover over Phoenix, housewives on Bravo are real, and women are always

the ones who snap.

God

Allah

Buddha

I know what I know.

The ovniport in Argentina lays in wait for the ship to return, and a Nebraska farmer

drives at dusk from fields of hay neatly bailed, sees lights streak across the sky

as if they foretold a story, his story and how he came from a sky of meteors

and constellations, where Pluto was always a planet, and the Big Bang was mute. 

Anne Graue is the author of a chapbook, Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press), and has published poems in literary journals and anthologies, includingThe Book of Donuts (Terrapin Books), Blood and Roses: A Devotional for Aphrodite and Venus (Bibliotheca Alexandrina), Gluttony (Pure Slush Books),The Plath Poetry Project, One Sentence Poems, Random Sample Review, Into the Void Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly, New Verse News, and Rivet Journal. Originally from Kansas, she lives in New York where she reviews poetry for the Saturday Poetry Series atAsitoughttobe.com and literary magazines and chapbooks for NewPages.com.

SPRING MUSINGS

by Martin Elster



A hundred thousand million galaxies
in motley clusters rapidly receding
from one another — like a bunch of bees
repelled by tainted nectar they’d been eating —
is a sure sign the cosmos is inflating,
as is the vocal structure of the frog
now calling out across the water, waiting,
as patient as the shadows in this bog.
With every croak, his throat must grow then shrink.
But will that happen to the universe?
Well, you can speculate and muse and think
and theorize and wonder and immerse
your thoughts in such abstract considerations
while I sit listening to frog vibrations.


Martin Elster, author of There’s a Dog in the Heavens!, serves as percussionist for the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and is a composer; his poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies.

WHAT YOU BELIEVE INTO

by Jim Gustafson



“What if I believe into this just because it is beautiful?” --Andrei Dmitriyevich Linde upon being told that his theory of the “inflationary universe” (The Big Bang) has been confirmed.  March 17, 2014


What if we believe
into this just because
it is beautiful?

Is that enough, or was
there more for us
to hope for.

Not many can place their life
in just one thing. Perhaps
science is poetry, after all.

One day, will our words
be measured at the earth’s pole?
Will come to the door

and say, what you have
believed into
has been proven true?


Jim Gustafson’s most recent book, Driving Home, was published by Aldrich Press in 2013 and is a 2013 Pushcart Prize Nominee. He is an MFA candidate at the University of Tampa, teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University and lives in Fort Myers, Florida, where he reads, writes, and pulls weeds.

STRAIGHT FROM THE PIT OF HELL

by Max Gutmann

It's overdue, this insurrection.
At last we will dispose
Of Darwin's dumb, duped cheering section.
Celestial insight grows;
We'll soon defeat its wicked foes
'Cause now we have a guy
Who'll see the House Committee knows
That evolution is a lie.

Can our distinct divine perfection
Be something that arose
At random?  Natural selection
Is clearly one of those
Base frauds a schoolchild could expose
If he should only try.
The proof's not difficult; it goes:
"Oh, evolution? It's a lie."

The larger point to our objection
Is showing science pros
We're focusing on their correction
And that they can't impose
Their will on ordinary joes.
Their wares we just won't buy.
Straight off this Global Warming slows
If evolution is a lie.

It's obvious. One must suppose
Evolving would imply
Improvement; Broun's election shows
That evolution is a lie.


Max Gutmann has contributed to The Dark Horse and other publications.