Winner, 2016 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition
It was only afterward
we found our figures
false, learned we had climbed
ghost ladders to accidental height.
We’d followed numbers
into night to scan
for matter, discovered
you, distant almost-planet—
but in the end you let
too many others in. As if
in the underworld after a war,
they haunt your silent
wandering corridors.
With your moon you orbit
nothing, center
not in matter but space,
links invisible, ice
infusing both, covering
your bodies
in their passage,
warmer regions dark
to our mechanical sight.
Faces inward, blind, tides locked
with your smaller twin
in synchronous rotation,
dancing, turning
together, leaning
out, each one crooking
with the other, point of connection
feeding the pull apart
as Charon sings
through the absence of air:
Come, pay your passage.
Kiss the round
and feel your eyes
darken over, feel the cold
thin disc rest on each pupil,
the worlds distilled
into the blackness
at the bottom of a well
