A Magazine of Many Arts

When we were what we no longer are
(young and less understanding of the world)
we would break those windows open
from within, shake
out our beds as if
that could make us unbelieve
the dreams we dreamed the night before.

We have no youth left, our eyes
like aged glass, like thinned milk;
we knew something once
that we forgot on the way to
no more houses that keep us inside,
no more windows that keep us from seeing

but
the owl women need no fear, no darkness
is the shade of dark
that could haunt an owl woman;

true, when the sun is high, burning the roof of heaven,
we bury our heads in each other’s feathers,
ears and hearts close as sin and suffering. We are afraid
(as afraid as owl women can be)
that we will never again hunt
white mice through the labyrinths of darkness
(yes, each turn will lead them closer to us, closer.)

And yet we know, sure as a house lies there
in dying want for human care,
that we will be here, that we are here,
after.

Guests was what we called the prisoners.
The term for us was contractors.
We saw ourselves as insouciant
sunbeams, a cult of gentlemen
rogues rendering extraordinary
service, wielding scientific methods.
Sometimes just our fists were
enough. UV lights glared around
the clock. Gook was the yellow
syrup they exuded under applied
stress, which resisted scouring
from interrogation-room floors
no matter what corrosive rinses
and surfactants were applied.
We had the cafeteria waitstaff
remove the reminiscent mustard
from the condiment lazy-susans,
and blunt the cutlery. We threw
breadballs and surfed on the sizzle
of duty-free liquor transported
all the way from the World.
We requested medical treatment
for our repetitive-motion trauma
and demanded personal rainbows
of numbing pharmaceuticals. Clearly,
flaws were already present. Organs
that might not have corresponded
to ours burst like eyeballs swollen
with glaucoma, or rupturing soufflés.
The fluid spewing out reminded us
of the slick inspirational harangues
a representative from HQ delivered
weekly, propped at the rec-room
podium while we fossilized
on folding metal chairs. Flowcharts
slid into view, titled Results
Are What Counts, as he prodded
the controls, promising bonuses.
He said advantage and incalculable,
and what sounded like goldrush.
His entourage gawked at the parade
as we herded guests to a narrow
stretch of shore where we kept them
behind electric nets between sessions.
Ponderous as glaciers, or cumulus
rising into windless air on a summer
evening, they looked like miniature
belugas or gigantic albino muskrats,
bellies billowing in the shallows
as they huddled together. Not mammals,
despite their warmth. Not like us.
The poignard spike of keratin jutting
from each orbital ridge was removed
surgically at intake processing—
the greeting ritual, we called it.
We gave them names: Marshmallow,
Cream Puff, Cool Whip, scarified them
with ID markings. They never made
noises in the audible-frequency range,
but we started wearing headphones
anyway. Dark lenses and heavy gloves
were already part of our uniforms.
Then one of the dishwashers let slip
what the first behavioral psychics
had discovered: our guests were only
hapless remnants of a dimensional-
cartography expedition come to grief
when their energy devices failed,
marooned in an unknown universe
with entirely different physical laws,
and imploring us for sanctuary.
Less-gullible advisors were quickly
sent to oversee us, stun batons poised.
Guests were stubborn, we were told, and
could withstand further vigor. We ran
into snags. Our glowering controllers
applied a sort of triage: those ruined
irreparably would serve as examples
to the others. Surely survivors would
bargain as they became desperate,
and reveal their arcane inheritance.
We underwent further motivational
conditioning; some of us were also
used as examples. When inchoate panic
set in, our replacements were already
in orbit above the facility. We knew then
that no one was going home. After
flooding the administration dome
with gas, we went down to the shore
for the last time. We shorted out
the netting, abandoned our gear
on the beach. Our guests let us ride them,
our final life-rafts, all the way out
beyond the continental shelf to where
the huge waves began, to a place
where we had always been friends.

illustration is  Sailing by Moonlight by Albert Pinkham Ryder

at age twelve
dad took me to
the space museum

i toppled planets
i stacked three feet high
my dad squinted and 
pulled his fingers
into a circle and
looked through–
like a captain
eyeing his 
telescopic piece–
“a meter,” he said
before they fell
pluto hitting his
newly-waxed
shoes

when we stopped
at the gift shop
i pointed at the 
astronaut ice cream–
when he came 
from the register
i pulled at the 
metallic wrapping
it did not
give way–
he pulled out
his swiss army
knife and ran a
cut through its 
crinkling packaging

strawberry-flavored
dry and brittle
it was nothing
like ice cream
on Earth

(except it was
on Earth)

he never imagined
that his curious girl

fifteen years later
would be squeezed
into metal packaging
stubborn and 
resisting tearing–
tough and obnoxious
only a laceration
from a passing 
micrometeorite
released the

dry and brittle
flesh within

image by the poet