POET LAUREATE ADA LIMON CREATES A POEM TO BE ENGRAVED ON A SPACESHIP

Others invited to include our own names on a chip

by Alice Campbell Romano

https://europa.nasa.gov/message-in-a-bottle/sign-on/

Years ago I bought you a star.
The framed certificate turns up 
now and then
when I sift a desk, weed a bookshelf.
An undistinguished star 
somewhere 
with your name.
You would better have appreciated
my renaming Mars for you, 
red combatant. 

Earth registers stars 
from Earth’s point of view,
assigns coordinates,
sells naming rights.
Maybe only Earth has this compulsion
to brand the infinite.

Our ambition sends craft 
to search out life
on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
We shall leave Earth’s mark— 
in—be astonished—

a poem 
about Earth. Poets ache.

I am tempted without reason
to piggyback, to add me, 
on a microchip
to Europa. 

You didn’t care when I bought you
a star. I will escape for a billion miles,
to the edge of the infinite, in my 
name alone. 

Alice Campbell Romano lived a dozen years in Italy where she adapted Italian movie scripts into English, married a dashing Italian movie-maker, made children, and moved with the family to the U.S., where they built, she wrote, and the children grew. Her poems have appeared in—among other venues—Prometheus Dreaming, Persimmon Tree, Pink Panther Magazine, Orchards Poetry, New Croton Review; Beyond Words, Writing in a Woman's Voice, Quartet Journal, Instant Noodles Devil's Press, Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press. In January, she was awarded HONORABLE MENTION in The Comstock Review's 2022 Chapbook contest, "...not an award that we give every year, but an honor set aside for a few manuscripts." Alice swooned. 

THE GREAT CONJUNCTION

by Barbara Simmons

“Shot using the decade old Canon 60D and 75-300mm by stacking 25 shots on the Conjunction with the same frame but varying focus. I am obsessed with Saturn and that’s where the prime focus is.” —Tweet by Sajal Chakraborty @sajaldreamworks

Bundled up and with binoculars, we are contemporary

versions of Ptolemy and Aglaonice, 

standing on our driveway, necks tilted back, our bodies a bipod

for our binoculars, finding the yellowish crescent of December’s moon,

and what we think might be the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.

Maybe it’s because we often are not part of something bigger than

ourselves, because we’ve missed the comet tails and then eclipses,

not standing in the hemisphere that’s best for viewing, 

we’ve kept our celestial appointment, keeping company with Genghis Khan

800 years ago, who also watched this joining in the skies.

There are, of course, glow-in-the-dark star stickers we'd placed

on our son’s ceiling when he was so little that he’d really thought

the sky had entered to illuminate his bedtime.  And, then there are the

many other simultaneous occurrences that are joinings:

the House and Senate, the King and Queen, the lords and ladies,

the earth and sea, the heavens and earth, the living and the dead,

the unspoken and the thought, the unsaid and the truth, 

the haves and the have-nots, the remembered, the forgotten,

until we hear, you and me, from friends that what we thought

we'd seen could not have been both Jupiter and Saturn, but only

one of them, given where we live.  So, you and I, conjoined now

for some years, made a decision and decided that your and my eyes

had seen the great conjunction, and like the Christmas Star, 

we will believe in something larger than ourselves, needing to

in times when either/or has reigned too long, and

like all good conjunctions, this conjoining, not choosing one or other,

a great conjunction, Jupiter and Saturn,

is how we’ll complete this 2020 year, allusion always

to a greater sight, and now, helps us to see a new night sky.

Barbara Simmons grew up in Boston, now resides in San Jose, California—the two coasts inform her poetry. A graduate of Wellesley, she received an MA in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins. Retired, she savors smaller parts of life and language, exploring words as ways to remember, envision, celebrate, mourn, always trying to understand more about human-ity. Publications have included, among others, Santa Clara Review, Hartskill Review, Boston Accent,  The New Verse News, Soul-Lit, 300 Days of Sun, Writing it Real, Capsule Stories: Isolation Edition and Autumn Burning Edition, and OASIS.

TALKING ABOUT TREES

by Bonnie Naradzay

The Great Conjunction of 2020 will brighten the darkest day of the year as the two giant planets of our solar system draw closer together in the night sky than they have been in centuries. By chance, the day that Jupiter and Saturn will appear closest for Earth-based stargazers is Dec. 21, the winter solstice, which is the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. Photo: The galactic core area of the Milky Way over Maskinonge Pond in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta on July 14, 2020. Jupiter is the bright object at left, with Saturn dimmer to the left (east) of Jupiter.Alan Dyer / Universal Images Group via Getty Images file via NBC, December 9, 2020.

What kind of times are they, when

A talk about trees is almost a crime

Because it implies silence about so many horrors?                       

—Bertolt Brecht, “To those Born Later”

 

Thin ice limned the pond early this morning

and a slick of frost dazzled the green fields

yet pink blossoms still drifted across a few limbs

of the lone ornamental cherry tree.

In the slant of sun, the great blue heron stood

knee deep in water, and ducks have returned

among reflected shapes of pondside trees – 

bare branches outstretched like hands of penitents.

I have been arguing all evening with my friend

via email about Odysseus. He says Odysseus 

could have built that raft any time he wanted 

to escape from Calypso’s island, but I say not until

Athena persuaded Zeus to send Hermes down.  

I see Odysseus down by the seashore, weeping there,

as the great hexameters roll out in the receding waves.

Then we spar about the Suitors. They must be killed, 

he says, for their conspiracy. I ask, what about diplomacy?  

(It is Advent. The people are armed for insurrections here, 

spouting obscenities. “Sir, have you no sense of decency,” 

someone finally asked McCarthy, not so long ago.)  

My friend mentions Thersites. He has me there.

Jesus healed the blind man and asked him what he saw.

He said, “I see men like trees walking.”

Tonight I see two planets grow closer in the night sky.

(I have grown numb about the latest attacks

on civility.) Priam came for Hector’s body 

in the dead of night. Achilles welcomed him

and stopped the war for Hector’s funeral rites.

Recently I read about the Christmas truce in World War I

for the burial of the dead. Someone brought lights.

Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.

       

Bonnie Naradzay's recent poems are in AGNI, the American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Tar River Poetry, EPOCH, Tampa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Potomac Review, Xavier Review, and One Magazine. For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC.                                          

TO SEE OURSELVES AS OTHERS SEE US

by John Beaton

Get Ready for the Perseids Meteor Shower: ‘It Will Rival the Stars in the Sky.’ NASA estimates that between 160 and 200 meteors will ignite in Earth’s atmosphere every hour during the display’s peak on Thursday night and Friday morning. . . . In this case, the debris were ejected when Comet Swift-Tuttle visited in 1862 or earlier.—The New York Times, August 10, 2016. Photo: A Perseids meteor streaking across the sky near Pirdop, Bulgaria, early on Aug. 12, 2015. Credit Nikolay Doychinov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via The New York Times

We’ll view the night-sky Perseids this week;
the shooting stars are back to entertain
with showers from the swift Swift-Tuttle's streak,
those particles which comet tails entrain.
They fall, though most are small as grains of sand
and very few much bigger than a pea,
as fireballs which, though they seldom land,
burn bright enough for all the world to see.

What might we think if we were on that rock
and flew by less than each one hundred years?
Our city lights would shine more with each pass.
Perhaps those meteors don’t turn to smoke
and, like the strike that killed the dinosaurs,
they’ve pocked poor Earth with fire and poison gas?



John Beaton, a retired actuary who was born in Scotland, is a widely published poet and spoken word performer from Vancouver Island, Canada.

NO CLOUDS LEFT TO COVER US

by Allie Long

Into orbit around Jupiter. Lockheed Martin built the Juno spacecraft for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Photo credit: NASA/Lockheed Martin via UniverseToday.

The god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief, and his wife, the goddess Juno, was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature. —NASA explaining how the space probe Juno was named.

Jupiter covers his infidelity
with thick clouds, masquerading

behind an entire atmosphere
as something we’d want to discover.

He surely looks at Earth and laughs
at the colorless vapor that veils

the outlines of land and sea, at how
we are tilted in constant bow to the sun.

We cannot cover our sins like a god.
The façade of our planet is cracked

like the skin that surrounds a laceration,
framing a picture for the Universe

of our uniformed men sweeping our black
bodies away in a flood of blood-spatter

while we choose to read lists of their crimes
as eulogies. They must die a thousand times

on our televisions and a thousand more behind
the eyelids of loved ones. We turn blue fabric

purple, soaking it in the holes our bullets dig
into the men who resemble killers. We are unable

to grant that lungs still rise and fall below
badges, that no offense can hide a dead body

as it rots without reverence in the street,
that no cloud can clot bullet wounds.

Soon, Juno will peer through Jupiter's curtain
and crash to her death on his surface,

and we will finally be forced to recognize
that a guilty man never becomes the victim.

Allie Long is an economics and English double-major at the University of Virginia. Her poetry appears in Ground Fresh Thursday, Yellow Chair Review, and Bird's Thumb.

THE ALIGNMENT

by David Chorlton

The view of the five classical planets -- Mercury to Saturn -- improves over the next week or two as Mercury climbs higher and grows brighter. Image by Roen Kelly. — Astronomy, Jan. 25, 2016. 

The view from the window early
is of a street before awakening
where a single porch light glows
beneath five planets aligned
in the pre-dawn universe.
                       The tabloids
have yet to strip naked
and campaigns for public office
are on hold while Jupiter
assumes its ancient role
as god of thunder,
                       withholding
its power in deference
to the moment’s calm. Stock markets
are yet to make a first transaction,
waiting for a signal from Mercury,
god of finance
                       and of tricks,
glowing seductively
next to Venus, who’s worried
about Saturn always trying
to invoke some revelry
                       but who, in his role
promoting freedom, can’t help
feeling glum about the way
speech has been confused
with wealth. The sky
                       is a deceptive calm
today, considering the constant proximity
of Mars, the god of war
who never rests.


David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems have appeared in many publications on- and off-line, and reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. His most recent book A Field Guide to Fire was his contribution to the Fires of Change exhibition shown in Flagstaff and Tucson in Arizona.