The Luniferous Gazette #11: Thirty Earths Away From You

 Moon Above, Me Below 

Moon above,

I know you’re just

a dead pearl

orbiting the earth,

no life in your dust,

only frozen water

pockets and craters

deep as oceans

of stone shadows,

and yet—

We humans give you

a thousand names

and legends, we whisper

our wishes to you in

the night and imagine

you blessing them silver

in your heart before

sending them back to us,

here on Earth—

But I know

we ground-bound beings

will never match your

airy purity, even if

we seize your matchless

cool heights in the heavens,

we will always remain

doomed by the gravity

of our own thoughts.

I would ask you

how blissful it is

to float free and

unencumbered

by blood, brain or bone,

but you have no mouth,

no lunar maw for hunger

or celestial hate, only

the quiet serenity of a crisp

and uncaring, ultimately

unknowable orb.

Thank you

for shining down

on me.

You don’t need

to say anything—

merely, beam

as you were,

sheen as you are,

moon above,

me below. 

Sometimes you can feel a poem coming on like a storm front. Every bone in your body aches with tectonic weight. All the things you truly want to say garble and gravel in your mouth. You feel like your heart might wrench and shudder to a stop in your chest with just one more beat. And then the ink gushes onto the page in keenest relief, the most sacred words racing free first—

Moon above. 

I’m forever grateful for the moon’s companionship, a shining constant throughout humankind’s earliest memories and records. Technically, our lunar satellite is ever so slowly slipping away from Earth’s orbit at a rate of about one and half inches per year (*until it becomes tidally locked some fifty billion years from now). But I know that at least for my tiny blip of a life span, the moon will always shine with familiar closeness as it tugs at the sea foam like a blanket—tugging free secrets that lie deeper than marrow, too. 

 

In gazing upon this imperturbable sphere, I subconsciously give it my calm; the peace I cannot always carry in my mortal frame. For sometimes, when pain is reduced to its basest form, only a shivering silence remains—a quiet that the silver rays of the moon purify beyond even the gentle gravity of tears.

The full moon rolls across the horizon like a pearl, and really, these two orbs are not so unlike. A pearl exists only because of damage when an irritant is trapped and layered over with a relentless aura of iridescence. The moon, too, is the product of an incandescent synestia sparked by the violent destruction of a young Earth, a visible wound just wider than a thousand miles. In their essence, both the moon and a pearl are identical twins, damage-born.

The moon mirrors the daylight in softer hues. Yet it also draws the wildest whims from humans by reflecting our mind’s light, illuminating all our wishes from the inside-out—even the ones we’ve forgotten how to speak aloud on Earth. 

According to NASA, the distance in miles between our planet and the moon is roughly thirty Earths. Yet sometimes, that incredible distance seems almost bridgeable by foot!

Perhaps my favorite memory of the moon rests in a one-hundred-year-old farm in Utah. My family only rented the home there for one year as the owner later sold the property to a company that bulldozed it to make shoddy subdivisions with high plastic white fences. But between the ages of 12-13, the vast field with a gnarled orchard behind the house was my favorite playground. And one night, the moon rose purple as a magical amethyst over this childhood field of dreams.

I didn’t know then that atmospheric conditions were at play with this ethereal trick of light. It seemed as if a portal to another dimension was opening overhead, perhaps to Narnia or Middle Earth! My sisters and I ran like feral ghosts through the field, howling up at this strange purple moon (*The sugar rush from A&W Root Beers might’ve also contributed to this sudden spike of euphoria). There was no one to tell us to be quiet. No one watching but the glowing orb above. Cloaked in the moon-bright night air, it felt as if one mighty leap would take me all the way to this mysterious jewel in the sky!

And if one day, humanity ceases to exist on Earth whether by our own catastrophe or the random sidereal whims of the universe, perhaps the collective psychic imprint of all our wishes and dreams will linger in the selenic dust. Perhaps some other minds will read these whispers, and cherish everything we once loved and lost, too. 

 

*If you enjoyed this poem, you might also enjoy the ink scribblings 

in my debut poetry collection, Tangible Creatures. 

 

~*~

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The Luniferous Gazette 10: A Substack Party at Cinderella's Corner

You are Cordially Invited to Attend . . .

“In my own little corner in my own little chair
I can be whatever I want to be.”

Lyrics By Oscar Hammerstein II 
Music By Richard Rodgers

I grew up listening to Brandy sing Rodger & Hammerstein’s Cinderella melody “In My Own Little Corner” on replay. There was a familiar comfort and magic in watching her dream-croon beside her little corner chair. Tucked away from the wide world, Cinderella was free to imagine every adventurous impossibility with full glitz and glamor.

I’ve come to realize that Substack is my little corner chair in cyberspace. I’m truly grateful for this platform, which allows me to drop a multimodal smorgasbord of random audio-visual elements, and PDFs like I’m the Crown Princess of the Greater Pedantic Empire! And let’s not forget the fancy formatting for prickmedainty poetry: *(See my Substack Post for all the extras)

Starry Untold

Shy star, quiet star, beaming in the dark!

Don’t shadow and dim even when
none marvel under your light,
Don’t cry if no gaze ever
catches your secret
blaze and slant—  

You are the starry untold,
but not unwritten,
the story bleeding
bright ink wishes
without a wisp of
gathered glory— 

So trail your embers
far and wide as
wings dare
take you.

*

Pure ink fun however I choose to share it. While I’m not the most tech-savvy person, I’m enjoying experimenting with the many features available on Substack.

And today, I’m celebrating the first ten posts of The Luniferous Gazette! Perhaps an entire cake might be a little premature, but a petite crystal slice seems an ample treat for my efforts—  

Mmm, just a subtle hint of Swarovksi sparklestars. 

So far, this weekly newsletter challenge has pushed me to dabble in such disparate subjects as ash diamonds, synestias, errant drops of cream, and holographic beasties. I feel like I’m getting back in touch with a lost spirit of curiosity that was finely ground to cinders by the weariness of adulthood.  

My mother homeschooled my sisters and I for much of our childhood education, requiring us to turn in a short story and a poem every Friday. Unfortunately, the only surviving material that I could locate was a water-logged booklet that my father compiled and gave to our grandparents at Christmas:

*Purrito graces this photo with his fluffy paw.

Clearly, I am no Judith Shakespeare (nor am I sure why I considered myself such an authority on the athletic activities of spirits). But while my creative ink might’ve been a mediocre mess, I still credit these weekly assignments for getting me thinking. Inking. Dreaming—

And in the spirit of trying new things on Substack, I present my very first comic:

Whatever your dream, I wish you brightness in your little corner of the world. Oh, and a pixie’s wishing penny for luck! 

 

 

~*~

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The Luniferous Gazette #9: What Emily Knew About Pearls

 In Pursuit of Ink "Gem-Tactics"

I must confess that I can only recite three poems off the top of my head, all mercifully short! My first and favorite memorized strand of syllables is Emily Dickinson’s ink gem, “We Play at Paste.” Today, I want to dive into the nitty-gritty luster of Poem 320, and how it’s helped to shape me as a writer. 

This poem is deceptively simple in both structure and subject matter. When read aloud, the sentences slip easily off the tongue like falling water, each em dash a subtle eddy that lilts softly into the next phrase. It took me barely eighteen seconds to recite eight tidy lines whose meaning is open to endless interpretations by the reader.

In the first stanza, the paste pearls, once so satisfying in their allure, are eventually reduced to objects of frustration and shame that are tossed aside in favor of real pearls. Yet in the second stanza, Emily asserts that “gem-tactics” are learned precisely because we’ve practiced with the lesser, imperfect version first, gaining a familiar feel for these spherical “sands.” Now, our hands are capable of tracing a similarity in shape that runs deeper than the mere surface level of a faux pearl—

Perhaps because a true pearl also holds a grit at its core? 

As an English Major, it’s rather expected that I make confident claims while pontificating on literary icons. However, I can’t glimpse into the rolling facets of Emily’s mind and know for certain that she was penning metaphors about such weighty topics as the transition between childhood innocence and adult maturity. Her dust has slept peacefully beyond human questioning in Amherst, Massachusetts for 139 years now, and yet we still try to nacre her thoughts and intents to fit our narratives.

What I can say is that the first time I read this poem, I was instantly drawn to her enigmatic concept of “gem-tactics.” For me, the pearls in her poem shimmer with the essence of revision. They represent the tedious act of plodding, plotting, and pearling my way to story completion. Of constantly rolling a stubborn little grit over in my mind like a ball of paste and pages until I polish it into the rarest of jewels: the finished draft, the final revision—the flawless ink world, an orb entire to itself!

Sometimes, we carry our half-formed pearls with us for years until the nacreous bolt strikes and we know exactly how to layer our dreams just so. I inked this wispy little poetry fragment as a teenager:

Linear time makes a line, and the angels keep singing.

I never wrote the rest of the poem that went with it, but I always carried it in the back pocket of my brain. Decades later, I snapped a picture of the sidewalk during a stroll through my neighborhood. It didn’t occur to me until a while later that I’d finally found it: The missing iridescence that perfectly pearled my fragment:  

Linear time makes a line, and the angels keep singing  . . . 

Other times, the writing process proves far more painstaking and uncertain, and I, too, am left feeling “a fool.” I’ve been scribbling my current work in progress, Agent Regalia, since 2018, and at times I desperately wish to toss my quill and quit—but I can’t. Not with Emily’s wisdom glimmering in the back of my mind. Now, whenever I am mired in the muck of drafting and revisions, I try to remember that I’m not merely “practicing sands.” I’m in my Pearling Era! For even the tiniest mote of an idea holds semi-precious potential and may yet gain luster if we persist in our ink gem-tactics. 

INK of Others:

When Elizabeth and I announced the closure of Young Ravens Literary Review earlier this February, we received a kind farewell email from a frequent contributor whose poetry was always a true pleasure to see pop up in our inbox. Anne Whitehouse also graciously gifted me a copy of her newest poetry collection, Steady. It took me several months to finish it as I lingered over each poem, and I know I will be reading it again! It’s hard to choose a favorite piece from this collection, but I was absolutely hypnotized by the haunting beauty of “Bernadette.” I would like to add my humble review of her gorgeous work:

Praise for Steady:

Anne Whitehouse’s poetry wrestles with the exuberant, lonesome ache of human existence. She lingers over the promise of dormant wildflowers while challenging the edge of “elsewhere” with questions about what may come and how love survives after the last page turns. Her ink traces a clear, indelible line deep into the reader’s heart that gleams “(. . .) like twinkling / light between dark trees at twilight.”

  

-S.E. Page, Co-editor of Young Ravens Literary Review

 

 

~*~

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The Luniferous Gazette #8: Breathing in the Summer Rain

Thoughts from Space Station Sarah  

I live in a far northern state, which means I might as well dwell inside a sealed space station for five-six months out of the year with outside temperatures that can dip as low -50°F. The sun may blaze the snow outside my window to white diamonds, but I know better than to stray beyond my shelter and touch them. 

I don’t want to breathe in the cold glitter that can frost my nose hairs and bite my breath in the time it takes to pull my trash to the curb. The days are short and teasing with their wan sunbeams, and the dark nights swathe my mind until I can barely think straight. I try to play it cozy with the winter, but by March, I’m veering into cabin-fever crazy! 

Why am I sharing all this in the dead heat of August? Because the promise of the bright and warm months used to get me through the mandatory icy season. But as our world boils just a few degrees hotter every year, my summers have changed. 

More often than ever, I am driven out of my precious green haven back into the refuge of my house as wildfire smoke drifts in from burning forests. My eyes and lungs sting as I watch behind the glass as a palpable haze smothers everything. Even the sun dims into a different, angry red star from a shadow dimension.

Yet after relentless days of smoke, my state finally got a respite this past Sunday with the rainfall. I was so happy for a chance to go outside and just frolic in the wide world again! Armed with my trusty five dollar yellow umbrella from a 7-Eleven in Japan, I set out—nothing fancy, just a wet walk around the neighborhood.

I took so many pictures of random things, cataloguing spangled spider webs—

 

Ripening seed pods—

 

Dew-pinned rose scraps—

And damp, incarnadine-threaded leaves.

All of nature’s little live jewels that I was forced to abandon because of the smoke.

 

I couldn’t help wondering if all my summers will end up being like this now; something to run and hide from behind air conditioning and fancy filters, with only brief forays into the outside world permitted when the rain falls and cleans the air just enough—

To breathe in a forsaken paradise.

To gulp deep Earth’s atmosphere like a lost astronaut returning planet-side after a far and lonely journey home.

Future/?/INK

TO TECH WITH IT ALL

First, we replaced live circus animals
with cruelty-free entertainment—
Holograms hurt nobody.

And later, when famine, flood
and fire erase the last flesh
and blood creatures

From their natural habitats,
we’ll repopulate with even
more holobeasties!

Turns out, all we ever really
needed from the world
was the IDEA—

Not the thing of it.


*In 2018, the German Circus Roncalli replaced all animals with holograms in concern for animal welfare—a noble sentiment in an ailing world.

INK of Others:

Epic by Conor Kostick

I adore this book because of how the author explores the power of duality. The society of New Earth relies on the virtual game world of Epic to resolve all conflicts, banning violence in their physical reality by allowing it exclusively in Epic.

But by becoming dependent on a game to function as their legal and economic system, poorer citizens are forced to waste valuable time earning wealth in a virtual world to gain a meager allotment of resources in reality. While a person’s entire livelihood can be wiped out with their player’s death, those players who amass enough wealth in the game can become privileged members of New Earth’s elite Central Allocations.

The young boy Erik tries to beat the system by creating “Cindella,” a swashbuckling character who attracts the attention of an ancient electronic sentience in Epic. I could go on, but I don’t want to spoil the story. I think what draws me deep into this story are the simultaneous double stakes—Erik must balance two identities, his own and that of his female player Cindella, and exist in two worlds, New Earth and Epic. What happens in one can have dire consequences in the other. That’s cool (whichever way/world you slice it). Also, don’t forget to check out the sequels!

~*~

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