For as long as we’ve been observing the night sky and the movement of planets and stars, humans have been curious about the other worlds that might be out there. We’re adventurous creatures: we like to explore, and we like to make friends, too. This month, I’ve selected twelve poems to carry you on a journey through space.
Three… two… one… liftoff!
“Zero Gravity” by Eric Gamalinda
The dunes were lit
like ancient silk, like clandestine pearl.
In the constant lunar night this luminescence
was all we hoped for. A creature unto itself…
Published thirty years after the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969, this poem takes a reverent look at the event through the eyes of a child. Possibility and longing suffuse each stanza, alongside a forward-reaching nostalgia.
“Model Solar System” by Michael Mesic
Mechanical and precise,
The tiny shapes revolve,
Orange or blue or red,
One speckled with blue and green,
Each at the end of a wire
Invisible as thread…
By contrast, Mesic’s poem invites the reader to look down on our solar system from above, the way a child might, creating a model for class. From this simultaneously childlike and godlike angle, one unveils the secret mechanisms that govern the workings of space; the tiny lightbulb inside the sun; the wires holding everything together. It is no less wonderful.
“Heliocentric” by Keith S. Wilson
Who could love you
like this? Who else will sew you in the stars?
Who better knows your gravity and goes
otherwise, to catastrophe?
I’ve schemed and promised
to bring you back a ring
from Saturn…
This painful yet poignant poem tells the story of an astronaut caught between their beloved on Earth and the siren-song of outer space. It brims with love, and yearning—the yearning of fingertips brushing what’s just slightly out of reach.
“Sunflower Astronaut” by Charlie Espinosa
For months I have studied the sun. My head of bracts tracked its arc like an antenna.
Now I am a sun, with a yellow crown and a hot core of disk florets and pollen.
I, too, emit signals to orbiting bodies who come and go with fertile stardust…
“Sunflower Astronaut”—with its accompanying illustration by Romie Stott—adopts a truly unique perspective on space travel, written in the voice of a sunflower seed.
“Life Centered Around” by Moon Bo Young (trans. Hedgie Choi)
It’s space and space smiles like a doll whose neck is the only part that turns. When Europa thinks of space it thinks of the year 5000 or just before the year 5000 or just after the year 5000.
Like Wilson in “Heliocentric,” Moon Bo Young’s prose poem uses the solar system as set dressing for a profound exploration of human emotion. In this instance, the narrator is not caught between two warring desires but trapped in a codependent orbit, like Europa around Jupiter.
“Wide Shining Craters” by Jace DeAngelo
There is water
on Europa
and I am so thirsty.
I knew the moment it mentioned Laika that this poem would hurt to read, and I wasn’t wrong. A meditation on the sacrifices made in the name of scientific progress, “Wide Shining Craters”asks important questions about who is deemed disposable enough to sacrifice, and who makes those choices.
“Pluto Shits on the Universe” by Fatima Asghar
It is February 7th, 1979 and my skin is more
copper than any sky will ever be. More metal.
We reach now to the edge of our solar system, where Pluto looms defiant, forever a symbol of self-determination in the face of arbitrary, externally-enforced categories. In this lively, profanity-laden poem, Asghar gives Pluto a voice, imagining the erstwhile planet as a rulebreaker, jubilant in its flouting of the universe’s laws.
“Some Facts Are Difficult to Discuss” by M.E. Silverman
My father’s favorite nebula, Lemon Slice, is named after his favorite dessert. His mother made it from scratch, using lemon zest and juice from two fresh lemons…
Beyond the solar system, there are nebulae where space dust glitters; the building blocks of the universe. Silverman writes of one such nebula in this prose poem, and even though the nebula in question is far away—4500 lightyears away, to be precise—his words bring it straight back home.
“Doppler Effect” by Lydia O’Donnell
Your light is the crunch of dead leaves
Cold, your rich light looks like a hearth
It’s not that you want to be dim
Other scientists believe you’re habitable…
With its experimental structure, its almost-duelling verses, “Doppler Effect”is an experience to read. It follows a researcher’s journey to determine whether life can exist on planets orbiting distant stars.
“I Roll Up to the Club in a Gundam” by Eric Wang
tell everyone that its laser swords are just giant glow-sticks. tell the valet to take it for a spin. tell myself that spacesuits are hip club attire. what’s more sci-fi than a gundam is that, somehow, all the friends i’ve ever had are here.
Meanwhile, this short prose-poem offers a snapshot into a glittering sci-fi future where a gaggle of space travellers reunite to pass an evening partying. Even though they are far-flung, galaxy-traversing adventurers, their loneliness—at only being able to see each other once in a blue moon—echoes the familiar loneliness we feel on Earth, when we grow up and all our friends move away to different towns.
“Earth Light: I” by Lynn Xu
Doors open and shut.
We’ve come to the place where nothing shines.
I hear eternity
Is self-forgetting…
Our penultimate poem is brief but dark, taking its narrators to the very edge of what is known. How to fill the endless, stretching silence?
“Everywhere That Universe” by John Ciardi
Even wisteria, sufficiently looked at,
will do for a galaxy. Nebulae
coil and flare on the trellises…
For our final poem, we descend back to Earth. The Universe is boundless, full of possibilities, but so is our own planet, right here at our fingertips. Look around with new appreciation. What do you see?
