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Praesepe
Say to my mother, "What time is it?" or "Are you ready to go to Wal-Mart?" and she'll respond "What?" though she's not hard of hearing. You have to take five seconds, re-set, and ask again. She'll even say "What?" before she's realized she's heard. This gives her a buffer against the avalanches my father and I can drop on her. She gets some breathing room. I think it lets her predict the future, since I can be standing in the kitchen and she'll say "What?" from the laundry room while I'm still quiet. Now I've started doing it, clearing a bit of time, giving myself a chance to consider; there's always more happening than I notice at first; maybe I missed something (you DON'T like raisin bagels). I get to live my life over instantly, fix mistakes before they happen. And I'm going for more: immortality the Zeno way. The next moment can't arrive, because first this moment would have to pass, and I still haven't exhausted it or it me. Is my plan working? Ask me again in a little while. © Mark Cunningham received an MFA from the University of Virginia, and still lives in the Charlottesville area. His astronomical poems take as their starting point some element in the shape, symbolism, or scientific knowledge about the title subject, and go from there. Though the title subject might never appear in the poem, its characteristics determine what goes in. His poems have appeared in Paragraph and Small Spiral Notebook; a selection of his poems on parts of the body, is on the Mudlark website.
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