Vacuum State
Unsuited,
it would take ~10 seconds,
fleshy human being
subjected, totally,
to the great unpressurized
breadth / void
I’ll be craning my neck at, incl.
super-blue-blood-moon
tomorrow,
for that selfsame hypothetical, yes
it would take ~10 seconds
to exit consciousness. Some time later,
unclear
how much time later,
abovementioned body
wouldn’t explode
absent atmospheric
pressure / absent matter / absent
resuscitation, but
swell, “this thing called skin
keeping our insides inside.”
Dermal liquid, evaporate already. Predawn
Wednesday,
3 celestial aberrations: 1) a moon
at perigree, 2) its reddening
entity slid
in the lilting shadow of our planet
Earth, 3) the moon appears again. This
coincidence consolidates
itself in my knee, kneeling
in grass, whole body squint
in apprehension. It consolidates it.
Note from the author: the quotation in this poem comes from an episode of the podcast “Every Little Thing.”
Patty Nash is a poet and translator from Germany and Oregon. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Interrupture, Prelude, Foundry, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. She is currently completing her MFA in poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She tweets at @pattynashdj.