Ally Malinenko- A Poem

Planet Mars

It is that moment when your feet slide across the floorboard, destined for elsewhere

that you think of the men in space

the way the nothing comes from the bottom

and the top and then again

from each side boxing them tight in their suits,

holding them together before breaking them apart.

 

You slide.

It only takes a moment, like a light bulb winking on.

 

I want to know what time I can be awake

when no one else is,

what second of what hour can I find myself

the only thing fully aware in this world,

eyes open

in day

or dark

feeling the groaning push of this planet against the all of that emptiness.

 

It will be at that moment that you will hear a high ring.

The whistle

that victims of an air strike hear

seconds before

and then forever after.



Ally Malinenko is the author of The Wanting Bone (Six Gallery Press). Her second book of poems entitled Crashing to Earth is forthcoming from Tainted Coffee Press and her first novel for children, Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb is forthcoming from Antenna Press. She currently lives in the part of Brooklyn the tour buses don't come to and rambles on and on over at allymalinenko.com