Issue #7

Some Day We Will be Scientists, or Farmers by Amelia Martens

We have begun the experiments. Peek-a- Boo Birdhouse, with two-way mirror so the girls can spy on chirpy hatchlings, watch cartoons, and cry. Next comes the Roots-Vue Farm Kit, dirt pellets fluffed to life by fork and seven cups warm water. The Egg Carton Garden, with optimistic beans. Our refrigerator monitors a series of magnetic<br /> hypotheses, obscured by coupons and photos of babies who no longer exist. All the while our house spins slowly through space; the dog in the yard is in his eighth rotation between ball and treat, between fence and oblivion. From the moon, Earth is aglow in blue flame. We are observed by satellites of dead stars, as if, by prediction, we will rise up and be absolved.

Amelia Martens is the author of The Spoons in the Grass are There To Dig a Moat (Sarabande Books, 2016), a book of prose poems selected for the 2014 Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature. She met her husband in the IU MFA program; their collaborative projects include a reading series, a literary journal, and two daughters.

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