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.