Slingshot Singing in Saturn
I travel far but I’m too large for space.
I won’t fit into the darkness — it’s too famous.
Saturn has ears and hears us packing.
No need for petty gossip says astrologers.
I called Galileo – he listened, his feet
Kicked up on table’s ledge with eyebrows
Sloped so low the world might cry in unison
(Dimly perceived: me)
Let’s glitter intergalactic and swap gravy.
I lose my keys to orbit inner graves
In search of openings guised as future.
Here my heart grows large enough
To sprout an army of ears that buzz
With singing from another moment
Terrestrial telescope traces my global lament:
“Astrologers are finding more and more
Solar systems in their earliest stages
Still compassed by spinning disc
Of rock ice gas” – Saturn – a star
That failed to gain enough mass to ignite.
I plan to visit other major moons.
I am a ghost, I travel solo
Freeze with fury in the vastness
Of found objects (lamp and pen)
Flung loose and heavy in space.
Watch me catch the light and ink the night.
Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein is a writer and poet from Chicago, IL with a heart tilted toward the Swahili Coast. Her poetry appears in The Moth (Ireland), Another Chicago Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Horseless Review, Paul Revere’s Horse, Contrary Magazine, and After Hours, among others. Essays appear or are forthcoming in Hypertext, Selamta, Teachers & Writers, Mambo Magazine, Addis Rumble, Art in the Public Interest and AramcoWorld. She is a 2006 Vermont Studio Center Poetry Fellow. In 2014, she trekked to Harar, Ethiopia to commune with the spirit of Arthur Rimbaud. Amanda currently edits for Global Voices Online and is working on a book of essays about faith, sex, and belonging. Follow her on Twitter @travelfarnow.
