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By Rane Arroyo

1. The Diaspora Begins

The ships choose different paths.

Mine is littered with broken stars.

One by one, we're swallowed

by an invisible leviathan: distance.

After losing contact with the others,

we float away from the land of

our ghosts. No one is buried in

space, bodies thrown into the black

where cosmic cobwebs catch them.

We've been pushed into this lush

nothingness in the sky. Yes, I wore

a cloud as a crown while herded

onto my ship. Now, shadows spin

all around us, naked prayer wheels.

2. Wandering in the wilderness

means something new between

galaxies. Space doesn't expand or

contract: it just is—think of waves

without seas or shores. We cry out,

¡we are dangling! Mystery has been

smuggled aboard, that ancient virus.

3. Another new planet is found

It rains lead there without

pause. It's purgatory, minus

the purging. It doesn't sink

into our purified zodiac.

This planet is a piñata not yet

saddled, a Big Bang orchid,

old Hell long before religion.

It has seas not for our whales

or mermaids. Its melting skies

cling to flux and flickering.

There's always the question:

do we finally have a home?




Rane Arroyo has published many books of poems and one collection of short stories. Next year he will publish The Roswell Poems (WordFarm Press) and The Buried Sea: New & Selected Poems (University of Arizona Press). He is working on science fiction poems and his memoirs, Naked Like A Constellation. You can learn more about Rane from his website on myspace or New Sins Press, or read his published works: Home Movies of Narcissus, The Portable Famine, and How to Name a Hurricane. You can email Rane at ranearroyo@gmail.com.
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4 Nov 2024

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