Voyager Atop a stack of mattresses, she senses something needling at her hip. A lonely spacecraft outruns the Sun, approaches the space between stars. She turns over in her not-sleep, thinks of turtles all the way down. From the edge of the solar system, one planet but a Pale Blue Dot. Beneath the stack of mattresses, a pea the size and shape of the Earth. Where the Sun’s reach ends, cosmic rays blaze in the deepening cold. She tosses and turns as turtles shift their weight. Teeter and sway. The edge of the heliosphere expands and contracts like a lung. Her body pushes against sleep as she flings a blanket over the edge. Billions of miles from the Sun, the boundary beckons. The spacecraft makes the crossing, and the turtles lean. She sits up and dangles her legs, scratches at a welt on her bare thigh. Finds there is no way down. Rover When my dogs go berserk at the hound next door— the air on our side of the fence thick with baying and barking I must thorn my way through to talk them down—I think of the planet Mars, named for the Roman god of war. Craters and canyons and volcanoes the color of blood, red dust swirling in the freezing wind. On its rocky surface, a pack of rovers shift their robotic eyes across the mineral soil. My dogs hackle and lather and pant while on the next planet over Sojourner, Opportunity, and Spirit—blind and staid—growl at the shiny newcomer with the last of their mechanical breath. But Curiosity wags its tail as Perseverance lands and sniffs at the regolith ground. I think of the Roman god’s sons, suckling at the teats of a wolf. How one would build a wall. Would kill his brother for vaulting it. I yell a little, then smooth the fur along the dogs’ backs, look them in their eyes until they relent and submit. As we rotate here, Mars rotates more slowly, and the new rover sends its helicopter pup out into the dust. Over the crater’s rim, the barren ridge, the rise of this wooden fence, we must choose how to approach the howling unknown. Field Day You were the girl who could run faster than the boys, faster than the new boy: soccer-spangled, pocket-combed, blue-eyed, fourth grade stringer of hearts. You were the girl who loved to bear crawl, hands splayed out, fingernails deep in the Colorado grass, your body buoyed above your preteen limbs like a thundercloud building across the Front Range. You were the girl who could crab walk backwards, arms bent so your elbows led the way, your tanned and scraped legs following insect-like in rapid plodding, neck crooked to see the finish line, strange creature of a landlocked coming of age. You were the girl who could skip mightily, hop on one foot for feet on end, run in reverse watching all your classmates recede, sprint full out forward into the sunny afternoon. You were the girl with a fist full of ribbons, blues and reds and golds bouqueting from your sweaty hands. You were the girl barely winded at the contests’ end, your breath a humble compass of your body’s blaze. Just let them try to bring you to your knees.
About the Author:
Brittney Corrigan is the author of the poetry collections Daughters, Breaking, Navigation, and 40 Weeks. Solastalgia, a collection of poems about climate change, extinction, and the Anthropocene Age, is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in 2023. Brittney was raised in Colorado and has lived in Portland, Oregon for the past three decades, where she is an alumna and employee of Reed College. She is currently at work on her first short story collection. For more information, visit http://brittneycorrigan.com/.
Isele Magazine 