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Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover: ‘You Must Believe The Center
Will Hold’ by Lauri Burke
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Into the Wild Unusual Dawn
In this vicious
day
of extremity,
the sun
arrives like a black
dog
worrying fire
in its teeth.
The Change
A coin flash
melted into a pocket.
A stain surprised
a shirt sleeve.
A bird split
a broad, bright sky.
A cloud
placed its hand
over the sun.
A drop of rain
broke its heart
on a sidewalk.
The planet shifted,
exhausted,
on its axis.
Suddenly, nothing
was the same.
And I alone
was watching
as the change
occurred.
NGC 6302
There’s a cold light blazing
in a dying star.
A small room within
a larger house, where all
of her sisters were made.
Their dresses blend
to a deep brocade,
loomed in space, blackness.
Each nebula tells a story,
remembered in ash
and broken chemicals,
lit with colors, nameless, ageless.
Forged in explosions,
contained in light years,
trailing time
like a burning veil.
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NEOWISE
In last night’s wandering hours,
with the transient moon loose
in another hemisphere,
you broke in the Northwest.
A fire stick
dodging the Big Dipper.
You fought your way
to somewhere else,
at the whim of some planet or sun.
It’s six thousand years
before you’re here again.
Of course, we’re all dead by then.
I hope an ancestor
will watch your ball of ice
shoot the deep darkness,
and understand, finally,
the millennia
in your devil tail dress.
Sweetless Venus
Her house is on fire.
It’s a trick of fate
that she’s volcanic.
Her surface heat
could be a forge.
Of course, she’s reflective,
so nothing truly gets to her.
It takes forever for her to turn,
to notice you.
Not that she’s forgotten,
but the days it takes
to register are not time
she can spare.
It’s her bad marriage all over again.
Mother
After Sappho
Stars around the beautiful moon
shaft their rays into the atmosphere.
Where you stand,
their astral dust seeps in,
sent from that lunar mother.
It’s the debris of reproach.
To take you to task for the time
you’ve wasted,
to inflict memory as pain,
as punishment.
To teach.
To correct destruction.
Even to learn.
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Carolyn Adams © 2021
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Carolyn Adams' poetry and art have appeared in Steam Ticket, Cimarron Review, Topology, Apercus Quarterly, and Blueline Magazine, among others. She is the author of four chapbooks, and has been nominated for a Pushcart prize, as well as for Best of the Net.