Volcanic stalagmite child
covered in the blanket of eclipse, I can hear you.
Jupiter storms waking your sisters held
inside you. Siren sung. Shipwreck. We’ve seen these tropes
before. When you settle, what birthed will seem
familiar? This brilliant life
spewing into the vacant cold of space. We now
know it isn’t so vacant. What is it
that you’re hiding from us? Electric
storm, your hands cradling the mute of a horn.
Curiously silent.
As you spin, your odd
shaped body you find
no shame. More lumps
in places that shouldn’t
have lumps. Closest to
the radio, do not care
you dance to the beat
those swinging hips in an
odd-shaped wag, you
point your fingers, sing
along those jagged
pocked feet across
the black dance floor
of space and all
the rest of us look
at you, mouth agape
and jealous.
We notice the skin first, the wrinkle,
the reddening, the craterous
valleys, a green slope developing
on the fingers. Televisions, white
sheets, a thin, lacy curtain
lets a little bit of host
in. You’re dying, Amalthea. Slow
wilt of age. A person taking
so much heat and giving
more of it back—We call that
love, we grasp
at your pieces, maybe
to not let all of them
fall into the gaseous body below.
Lawrence Eby lives, writes, and edits in Southern California and is the author of two books, Flight of August (Trio House Press, 2014) which won the 2013 Louise Bogan Award, and Machinist in the Snow, forthcoming from ELJ Publications in 2015. His work has appeared in Passages North, Arroyo Literary Review, Superstition Review, and others. He is the founder of the poetry press Orange Monkey Publishing and a founding member of PoetrIE, a literary nonprofit in the Inland Empire of Southern California.
Photo modified from © Seán A. O’Hara via Creative Commons
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