i.

wide-angle shot from below of a female astronaut with an athletic feminine body walking with swagger toward camera on Mars in an infinite universe, synthwave digital art [1]

                                                                                                                                  [breathe]

ii.

Imagine this: a baroque planet.

Red dunes below a reddish sky and clouds

obscured by powdery dust rising

from disturbed ground. A woman, unreadable,

even as she faces us. Infinitely athletic,

she has been stamping all over

this once-pristine surface: footprints in the thousands,

silvery trash scattered on the aeolian wind.

Beside a flag pole as tall as a human, she rests

a boot upon the lip of a shallow crater, expression

concealed by the reflective glare of a fishbowl helmet.

Now we detect the storm, her head turning.

Fractional, this moment in-between.

Any minute now she will scatter, become

the reddest of all the red dust.

iii.

On a variation of a home planet, a mother

holds her baby lightly: gravity isn’t as strong here.

The baby is bouncy-beautiful. The baby possesses

the spirit of Helen Pashgian’s ‘Untitled’ (1968-1969):

glowing, eyes as round as earths.

Behind them sits a small house constructed from

local forest. The mother chopped the trees

before the baby was born. See the small pink scar

where the axe nicked her left—our right—arm?

The trees grow constantly here: already

the air is thickening with the leavened scent

of soft yellow flowers. Notice the vibration moving

from the soles of your feet to the tip if your nose.

The ground is shaking from bursting seeds.

iv.

Enhance, enhance. A mirror Earth, Ever-

glade 2.0. Picture an award-winning advertisement

for verdant living, the brochure made glossy

by greased thumbs. In the foreground, a woman-

or-gator with an appealing grin sits atop a green stone.

We, the chlorophyll-starved, gravitate toward

her likeness. Waiting to enter a paradise of rivers

and thick brush, the soil so soft beneath our toes

it is unbelievable. A living thing. A prompt,

pressing deeper, touches another creature’s skin.

The woman-turned-gator says, stay awhile. 

Impossible to tell friend from foe in soupy daylight.

Recall Natalie Dowse’s ‘Crocodile Tears 3’ (2016)?

Recall Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins’

‘Teleosaurus (Crystal Palace Dinosaurs)’?

There is water seeping into the pool we have made

with our minds, sparkling like lab-grown diamonds.

v.

The alternative, of course, is to close your eyes.

Explore the universe in the corridors of your optic nerves.

A woman with iconic plaits orbiting her earlobes—

Jiha Moon’s ‘Leia’ (2013)—,

the soft sweep of her shoulders freckled in stars.

Believe us when we say it’s better this way.

[1] Text prompt given to DALL-E2 to create the June 2022 cover of Cosmopolitan magazine.