Size / / /

Under French and Swiss, it loops

straddling resistance and neutrality

in tunnels that are many stories

tall. They'll accelerate particles.

Who knows what that means—

except their white coats and access keys.

The Higgs particle could be in reach.

OK. Signatures of supersymmetry, too.

Right. I say, accelerate this family.

Send mom round the rings.

Counter-rotate dad and kids

all of them riding seven trillion

electron volt beams like some carnie

just set it up in a mall parking lot:

"6 tickets a ride, or get a wristband."

Start the flight that ends with smash.

We'll all super-collide to find immensity,

energy, strange answers to strangers'

questions. Asymmetry's embedded here

in the universe—even families—even moms.

Somebody chose what stays and what goes.

Dark matter, gone. Life, the universe,

everything has 23 per cent dross, so mom

lick your finger, smudge the cheek of all

existence and say, Smile for the camera.


Marcus Goodyear is senior editor for a nonprofit foundation in Texas. His poetry has been published in several magazines including, Geez, Stonework Journal, and 32 Poems. You can read more of his work on his website, GoodWordEditing.com. You can email Marcus by visiting his contact page on his website.



Marcus Goodyear
Current Issue
25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—
Issue 18 Mar 2024
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