by Vicki Feaver

I dug all night in the company
of moths — drawn from the dark
to the bright beam of my torch —
recovering first his skull, last,
the phalanges of his toes,
Finally, at dawn, my bag full,
I carried my husband home.

Laying his bones, damp and cold
from the grave, on a rug
by the fire, I found a drill,
pliers, and a coil of wire.
Aided by the diagrams
in his anatomy books,
I reassembled his gaunt frame.

The night of our wedding,
he’d swung me off my feet,
waltzing me from room to room
before carrying me up to bed.
Now, I held him and danced
the same route, stumbling,
almost falling on the stairs.

Once we made love in the bath.
Now, I lifted him gently
into the tub and washed him
like a muddy child,
scrubbing with a nailbrush
at green and amber stains
in the porous bones.

His hands, I left until last —
soaping fingers, famous
for their delicate skill,
with my fingers, crooked
and clumsy with arthritis.
Finally, rinsing off grey suds,
I dried him with a warm towel.

I slept as before his death:
his knees slotted into the crook
of my knees, my buttocks
cradled by his pelvis,
my head on the pillow
beside his, dreaming
of his breath on my neck.

by Pippa Goldschmidt

Stutter–dots of light break up the sky,
a bright Morse code
that we love to crack.
But even after we receive the message,
each star will persist in staking its territory
way beyond what,
to our minds,
is a reasonable boundary
to claim even the smallest, furthest rock.

All we see of these distant planets
are their clean–punched shadow–holes.
And all we know is their inability
to take care of themselves
and their reliance on the light of others.
But our knowledge can’t be unique
our observations are not special.

We must suppose that, in turn,
we are being watched
from somewhere else.
It’s no use looking and looking.
We don’t know where.

The only place we can’t be seen
is behind the telescope dish
where we congregate for safety
together with those types of plants
capable of growing all their lives in the shade.

by Pippa Goldschmidt

The (indirect) evidence for dark matter as inferred
from the higher-than-predicted speed of galaxy rotations
i.m. Vera Rubin

Picture the girl standing
on the side of the highway
at night, and
she’s wearing a skirt
its white fabric sheer and gauzy
shining with reflected light.
Close to her, a wreck of a car
the glass it once relied on
now scattered on the road.

From this jumble of information
you could construct a simple cause and effect —
the girl running alongside the traffic
too damned quick for her own good.
That skirt spinning in the darkness
doing a Monroe in the slipstream.
Nobody wanting to slow down for her
she’s too thin and gawky,
too insubstantial.
Those eyeglasses!

But if you are going to become any good at this,
you should consider other possibilities —
as each driver follows a predictable route
she’s the focus of all their orbits.
Let her be the fixed point in your picture.

by Patricia Ace

My cousin is taking a course in miracles.
She rises at five to the cries of the birds,
the tropical light bleaching the room
where she sleeps alone; she prefers it that way,
lovers kept long–distance, on call.
A cold shower in the morning is the hardest thing you’ll do all day.

On the terrace of her eyrie in Maraval,
after morning yoga, she moves easy as a tiger,
sips coconut water bought road–side from her private supplier.
At the shrine of giant Hanuman she squats in the shade
sucking watermelon, cool and crêpey on her tongue.
Women should take Savasana at least three times in 24 hours.

Driving her SUV through the slums of Port of Spain
she recites the Hindu parable of the twilit serpent
revealed as coiled–up rope. She’s seen bodies
burned on pyres, heard their skulls go pop.
But death doesn’t scare her. She quotes the Bhagavad Gita:
the unreal has no being, my love, the real never ceases to be.