LUNAR IMPACT

by Martha Landman



Phil Plait writes on February 24, 2014 in Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog: “On Sept. 11, 2013, an asteroid hit the Moon. That happens all the time, but most of the cosmic debris is tiny, far too small to detect from the Earth. But this one was different. Roughly a meter across and moving at interplanetary speeds when it slammed into the lunar surface, it created the brightest explosion ever seen on the Moon! The whole thing was captured on video.”


Walking in the moonlight then,
we basked in that long afterglow,
our lips a molten mass, your face
a spectacular episode in the whiteness
of moon. At the sight of your silhouette
gliding in the water, desire dislodged
like lava, with the force of a fridge
hitting the moon; an asteroid
through a sea of clouds.

Through a sea of clouds
the moon gazed at us, her naked
eye a telescopic lens, her smile
a thermal glow. She moved at
elegant speed around the earth,
dodged and winked at every
meteor along the way.


Martha Landman writes dry poems in the wet season of tropical North Queensland, Australia.

REMNANTS OF THE CRASH

by Kristina England

            Headline: "Actor Paul Walker dies in car crash,"
            the blaze making his beautiful face unidentifiable.


All I can think is "I hope he died on impact"
because that wasn't the case for you -
no seatbelt, ejected at high speeds,
thrown under your own wheels,
those once vibrant eyes dulling
under the red and white flash of disaster,
your son, stuck in the backseat,
begging for "momma" to soothe
his temporary and long-term boo-boos
as you shuddered out the last breaths
of mother, wife, friend on your graveled grave.

Maybe the driving laws were never meant for the driver.
Maybe they are there for the ones left behind
with the gut-wrenching task of identifying
a once beautiful face.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Her fiction and poetry is published or forthcoming at Extract(s), Gargoyle, The Story Shack, Tipton Poetry Journal.