A CHILD’S GUIDE TO THE ICEBERGS

I have put the night-light on.
Don't be afraid of the dark,
deep suck of the dark
like an ocean, I tell you
there is light in the ocean.

I have seen it, and one day
you will see it,
the phosphorescence of jellyfish
scattered across the tabletop
of the ocean, I have looked down
into the tropical dark and seen
needles of electric blue
tatting their neon in.

And in the Arctic, where
I have never been, there are
icebergs. Think of that light,
tons of it, hard light bobbing
in the black water,
you could dive and dive
and never get to the end of it.

--Elizabeth Gold

Copyright © 2015 by Oberlin College. May not be reproduced without permission.

THE PROPHETS

My father sees God in the ocean. A hillside.
The divine chucks itself on his surfboard.

Science unraveled the start of the world by noting all planets are drifting away.

At 15, I am all girl-flesh, no faith.
O body. The globe of it expanding. New creases & out into space.

Science echoes the sprawl of a teen's day / heart / god.
My mother wakes in-patient from an overdose.

Slides out into space. I want.
The boy who plays drums to begin to painfully love me.

I drag my body to a Day of Obligation. My father asks.
Can you proofread my prophecy? Something hope.

Something loss. At 16, I have wounds on each wrist.
Tiny stigma, stigmata. My mother comes to in a red room.

Feet bent back & she’s smiling.
She comes to me in the beige leather front seat of her Honda.

She says: I have a secret you can’t ever share.
All of life is the secret, & the porn, & the spheres she drives forward.

Chatroom lovers, knifepoint shoes, white-knuckle sober.
As she unwinds, I fold inwards.

I fold inwards. O Earth, you are still young & keening.
You do not yet know how to swallow the universe without tasting.

--Cait Weiss

Copyright © 2015 by Oberlin College. May not be reproduced without permission.

EVENTS MINIATURIZED, BUT ALWAYS PRESENT

—The stumbling, tripping. Last night
we looked at the Crab Nebula. When a star

dies we call its shock of Technicolor
a supernova. Today a brute bumblebee

rumbles the wisteria's lilac clouds. Today
an infant and a zinnia. The one's crying becomes the other's

vivid color. Today cumuli, lightning, then
pollen floating on the pond like moments still spilling

from the Big Bang. —Gush of water, laughter, a hiccup. The zinnia seeds
resemble arrowheads. The tense

of all verbs is really the same. Why didn't I keep the letter sent
before you died unopened?

--Mark Irwin

Copyright © 2015 by Oberlin College. May not be reproduced without permission.