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Poetry
Speculative
Chaste Baptistina, untouched in an age,
Quietly glides past a ruffian’s cage.
Now--too naïve to imagine his mind--
She passes too close, trailing beauty behind.
Timing his circuit and gauging the stars,
Shameless, he lunges. He breaks through his bars,
Looses the lust pent up thousands of years,
And shatters her there, spreading wide her ice tears.
Space is polluted with virgin debris.
Spent, her assailant now ceases to be.
Smashed Baptistina defiles the night sky,
And space’s cold vacuum devours her cry.
Dragons at dawn stretch their sinewy necks,
Run leather tongues over melon-sized specks
Etched on their haunches, and silently graze--
But then Baptistina sets heaven ablaze.
Clouds burn like paper, the bleeding sky roils.
This landform lurches and that ocean boils.
Dust rushes skyward; Earth dons a black crown,
And giants that prospered once softly lie down.
Lesser beasts scurry, their hour come round,
Ducking the cold in dank holes in the ground.
Living--but just--to slouch forth small and weak
And sniff the dead dawning, their foul reign to seek. |
“That the dinosaurs were killed off…by an asteroid impact is now widely accepted. Dr Bottke's contention is that the deed was done by one of Baptistina's daughters.”
-from “Baptistina’s Terrible Daughters,” The Economist, Sept. 6, 2007
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
-W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming,” November 1920
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Copyright 2008, John Kuhn. All rights reserved. John Kuhn is a founding co-editor of Fear and Trembling Magazine. His own writing has appeared in dozens of small press publications in the US and the UK. He placed first in the 2006 and 2007 DKA Magazine (now Mindflights) poetry contest. He placed second in the long form category of the 2008 Mindflights poetry contest. His poem "We Build Our Captors Here" was listed among "The Best of 2007" by Aphelion Magazine. Several of his stories and poems have been selected for inclusion in "Year's Best" anthologies. Kuhn's first book, Texas Eccentrics, published by Atriad Press, is now available at www.amazon.com and from many Texas booksellers.
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