Dark Matter

On Mars, Curiosity
sings “Happy Birthday”
to itself each year—
softly beeping its dulcet
tones like a heart machine
measuring the rhythm
of the red planet’s pulse.

♢

O symptoms! Last night’s
flaming sword slicking
the ground with stubborn
blood—I’d hoped Angelica
would be alive to see it
happen. It wasn’t like this
in the movie version at all.

♢

After the war on what
ever was old was over
came the war on all that
was new. And after that war
was over, the philosophers
bit off their tongues way
back at the roots.

♢

She would have called
me foolish for taking
the unnamed pill in my
coat pocket. Some error
exists in my raveling;
some arrhythmia inter-
rupted my heart’s talking.

♢

A breath inserts itself
into words like a thing
that doesn’t want to die.
Outwardly, the wall exists
to keep us out, but inside
counts itself lucky to
sleep out among the stars.

♢

Pause. An imminent lover
asked me to recall all the
homes I’d ever lived in and
to pronounce them in my
sexiest tongue. I broke
a tooth on their wet pits
and swallowed some whole.

♢

Anywhere? the little spring
asks, welling up in your
mouth until you vomit. A string
is the loneliest thing to tattoo
around your ankle, but she
and I did before we died. Don’t
turn this into some monster.

♢

The paint on the boat’s hull
flakes under the scrape of
a single fingernail. Collected
in a palm and then thrown
into a lake. Maybe. Pressure,
pulled and released into
the sky like a flock of geese.

♢

Our mother of planets snapping
a wishbone in half, welcome to
the new century. The machines
dream of unifying thought and
action. The poets dream of more
machines trained to interpret our
dreams. Our mother of wishbones.

♢

The man who shares your name
lowers a bucket into the depths.
The woman who shares my face
commits perjury in the murky
well. I’ve known them both
too long to name them or tell
them apart. Except in the dark.

♢

Accepting a premise from outer
space, my logic returns to star
dust. Sleep is a wishbone split.
What foolish child won’t accept
the larger half? Luck enters as
a smoke under the door. What
child won’t choose to breathe?

♢

O Amherst, Tucson, Chicago,
Tulsa, Albuquerque, Missoula,
Racine! O empty stomach! O
dry heave! Odometer turning
over in the orange street light.
Tomorrow is only overexposed
film in a disposable camera.

♢

Here, dry west, your golf courses
bloom like grassy wounds. I ache
green for you. Dear raven atop
a telephone pole, coaxing forth
some new apocalypse—message
received: I miss you completely.
We are all now totally fucked.

♢

Define divide on your softest
touch and I will warm to it. All
that infinite, empty space language
leaves open for us. A gap two
souls wide splits the planet down
the middle and wounds my side.
I finally give in to the riddle.
 
 

Nomina Sunt Consequentia Rerum

We make a few things well

and they are all colorful,
handsome reproductions of

ourselves. Whatever we

are, or could be, let it not
be said we are not hopeful,

suicidal with longing. Everyone

asks at some point, what is that
sound? We stand around leaching

into the soil, all of us broken

irrevocably. But surprising,
tender sometimes in the late

hours, our sense of perfection

tamed and beheaded. Like
a flower. No longer any words

to convey what’s beautiful.
 
 

There I was, waiting to be born

good for nothing
but building fires
and opening jars.
Like wild birds
of which you are one
waking in the mouth
of an enormous door.
Outside the frame
sleep stalks its prey.
All the moving parts
stop at once to ask
why not? Don’t you
touch the flame. Little
one, this is serious. I
would prefer to eat
the words that have
stewed so long, but
instead will cough
them up. So you can
pick through them
for portents. Cast
spells. Here’s another
one. On the edge of
my tongue it sits
like a peach pit still
wet with spit gathered
from years spent between
your legs. I am a small
dot on another small dot
in a vast consortium of
small dots. It feels a lot
like shaving my pubic
hair in the shape of
a cross. Let the lovers
love a while longer
before the kingdom
comes and the blue world
moves on from us
and over a distant hill
like a bloodied fist.
 
 
 
Nick DePascal lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife, son, three dogs, and four chickens, where he teaches English at the University of New Mexico and writes poems. His first book, Before You Become Improbable, was published by West End Press last year. You can find his poems in fine places such as Narrative, interrupture, The Los Angeles Review, Small Po[r]tions, The Laurel Review, TAB, Aesthetix, and more.