The Atom No. 18

Fusiturricula Lullaby

A visit to the shores of lullabies,
So far from here, so very far away,
A floor of sand, it doesn’t matter where,
And overhead a water-ceiling sways;
A shell is summoned to materialize—
The holy life, a spiral, hushed and pure,
Complete unto itself—a spiral shell

Gjertrud Schnackenberg

2010

Combustion

If a human body has two-hundred-and-six bones
and thirty trillion cells, and each cell
has one hundred trillion atoms, if the spine
has thirty-three vertebrae—
if each atom
has a shadow—then the lilacs across the yard
are nebulae beginning to star.
If the fruit flies that settle on the orange
on the table rise
like the photons
from a bomb fire miles away,
my thoughts at the moment of explosion
are nails suspended
in a jar of honey.

Sara Eliza Johnson

2014

So They Say— They Finally Nailed— the Proton’s Size— & Hope— Dies—

but love does not, Menelle Sebastien.
Of all the afflictions
& luck,
all the sums & paradoxes,
& gravitons that add up
to more minus
than plus,
I promise that love
is often as inconsiderate as it is just

Rosebud Ben-Oni

2020

Poems

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The Atom No. 18

Fusiturricula Lullaby

Combustion

So They Say— They Finally Nailed— the Proton’s Size— & Hope— Dies—

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