a series of Augusts – Ashley Cline

a black hole sings for the first time.
no, not for the first time, but for the
first time with an audience we can
trace in our mothers’ faces.

elsewhere: Jupiter blushes blue.

& Voyager 2 leaves Earth, exchanging
one pale blue dot for another. & though
she does not know this at the time, you
can hear the thuds of stone

against the sound of heartbeats—

elsewhere: i am born (blushing blue,
too). elsewhere: i am dying (blushing blue,
still). & still elsewhere i am asking, how
were we ever so young, you & i—

& cut from the same nervous cloth?

author’s notes:

The phrase “you can hear the thuds of stones against the sound of heartbeats” is lifted from the article, “After 45 years, the 5-billion-year legacy of the Voyager 2 interstellar probe is just beginning” by Alice Gorman (The Conversation, Aug. 19, 2022). Launched on Aug. 20, 1977, Voyager 2 contains the Golden Records: a mixtape of Earth sounds sent into deep space; nearly half a century later, on Aug. 21, 2022, NASA released a cosmic remix sampled from a cluster of galaxies about 250 million light-years away. One day later, on Aug. 22, 2022, NASA’s Webb telescope shared an image of Jupiter in infrared light (in which she appeared to glow quite blue); & much more quietly, 31 years before even this, the author was born.

An avid introvert, full-time carbon-based life-form & aspiring himbo, Ashley Cline’s poetry has appeared here, & also there. A two-time Pushcart nominee, her chapbooks “& watch how easily the jaw sings of god,” (Glass Poetry Press, 2021) & “electric infinites” (Variant Lit, 2023) are available now. Twitter: @The_Cline.