come join my fleet
we’ll visit new planets
wear uniforms
in muted colors
time will stretch
collapse
make us patient
no longer
an audience
we don’t even know
if anyone
is still looking for us
and by now
none of us is
sure
we still want
to go back
a stone to lay my head on
I don’t know why
hotel rooms keep me
awake in the middle
hours of the night
it wasn’t the noise
not the lone bird
singing itself in the dark
not the bed which
was comfortable not the
temperature which
was fine
maybe the sense of
suspension—which used to be
my home—maybe it
angled the room
until the mattress sloped
and the walls receded
imagine heaven as a place
where you can walk forever
with a happy dog
(which shows you
how modest
my aspirations are
why not a baby mammoth
a game of catch with
a brotherhood of otters
the glitch of course:
we may not be the ones
directing the games
(we will also probably
be impractically naked
our gangly limbs finally slowly
understanding how much we
want to play
Copyright © 2024 Otis Nebula Press. All rights reserved.
art: Hannah Dobek
Martine van Biljert is a mixed media poet, novelist, and non-fiction writer who grew up in Iran, now lives in the Netherlands, and in between worked as an aid worker, researcher, and diplomat, mostly in Afghanistan. Her poems have appeared in many places.