Bright Clutter by Susan Cohen

Bright Clutter

Because I read about space junk and glimpsed that image 

of a Tesla, mannequin at the wheel as it shot past Mars,

today I see my nephew floating in the ocean. He travels

as molecules among glittering galaxies of fish, 

but I see him back inside his skull, mutely mouthing 

underwater. His small plane plunged to the Pacific 

years ago, linking what’s above with what’s below. 

Currents spun him round for days. Food for fish. 

Matter swallowed by black holes. 

He still drifts between the worlds for me, eternal 

as a plastic man and occupied with nothing. 

It’s the ocean that stays busy. I forgive the ocean. 

I love to stare at how stubbornly it moves.  

Only, he keeps washing up against me, stuck 

between forever and never again, bright clutter 

the universe refuses to erase and no one can retrieve. 

Susan Cohen is the author of Throat Singing (2012; Cherry Grove Collections) and A Different Wakeful Animal (2016; David Martinson—Meadowhawk Prize; Red Dragonfly Press). Her recent poems appeared in PANK, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, the Southern Review, and won the 2020 Terrain.org poetry prize. She lives in Berkeley.