Askold Skalsky

When I grew up, I wanted to be a microcluster
and have a safe life, to be incorporated into larger
wholes, part of a clutch, like a hand holding out
its fingers, like globules of stars moving in the same
direction with nearly the same speed. Just a clot in a
coagulated mass, a portion of a roundish, viscous lump.
Later when my individual tendencies crystallized,
I opted for a pyrotechnic signal, a group of fireballs,
maybe a mineral formation like a bunch of grapes
or a decoration of silvery acorns and oak leaves.
But something had gone wrong: I began to feel thick
and nondescript as though degenerating into a canister.
My hopes diminished; my prospects fell like fragment-
ation bombs released from an aircraft at great height.

Originally from Ukraine, ASKOLD SKALSKY currently resides in Hagerstown, Maryland, and has had poems in over 300 magazines and online journals in the USA as well as in literary publications in Canada, England, Ireland, mainland Europe, Turkey, Australia, and Bangladesh. Over the years he has won several prizes for individual poems as well as two Individual Artist Awards in Poetry from the Maryland State Arts Council. His first book of poems, The Ponies of Chuang Tzu, was published in 2011 by Horizon Tracts press in New York City.

C. M. Donahue

“‘Goodnight Earth. Goodnight humanity’: China’s Jade Rabbit Rover Tweets Its Own Death”

— The Independent, 03 February 2014

Upon landing on the moon,
I reach my robotic arm out
into the silence. My solar panels,
like metallic sunflowers, blossom
and angle to find light. The solar wind
coats my body with a layer of dust
as I take in the grey desert
and the vast darkness beyond it —
my new home.
 
After my first lunar night.
I trundle across the highlands
to survey the maria and craters stretching
in canyons before me. My wheels
plow through soil like snow
with a scent resembling spent gunpowder.
My arm extends to capture samples:
basaltic rock, volcanic glass beads,
the ubiquitous dust of comet particles.
I store them in my pockets, souvenirs
for the journey back.
 
Weeks later I awake to find
I can no longer move — a glitch
in the control circuit. Rooted
to the surface, I listen to the static crackle
from my radio as my mind wanders
to the image of a single boot print.
 
After two years, I still huddle
like a Rabbit, waiting
for Chang’e, the moon goddess
drunk on the elixir of immortality.
Between periods of blinding sun
and opaque shadow, I look out into space:
eddies of neon nebula amid
the scattering of stars hypnotize,
lull me into sleep mode
as I look back to earth, a blue crescent
pinned to this lonely horizon.

C. M. DONAHUE holds a BFA in Poetry from Emerson College and an MA in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Connecticut. Poetry by C. M. Donahue has recently appeared in Amaryllis and Sonic Boom.