Read More: A brief Q&A with Jacob Strautmann
Kessler Syndrome (Terra View E2112)
Here in the umbra, an imitation of peace.
In the slow rotation the orbiter marks,
Striated clouds of the South Pacific
Scroll kindness out of the wild.
Like thoughts spill here fatherless,
A delta-v of former mortgages—
My daughter swept away and the cost
Of a sad vertigo called adventure.
The stars appear again in the ninth sunset
Out of the purse of the world. I have
Lost all connections, but there are hours
I leave the radio on, swapping one
Signal for another. Sometimes I catch her
Voice or thunderstorm thinning out.
Light Job (Interstellar View X3444)
Because the Monks were given the hollow-bodied
Lagrange Station, a gesture for all they had done
For travelers, and initiated a grand telecast
Calling in on the rib of each bell a fleet of builders,
Their stipend merely hospitality, a bunk to join
The order if worthy, a thousand years
Of singular purpose gathers up more than
The empires of the Old Orbit. They started
With a heart the size of a city center, their numbers
Stable through the Shedding Nimbus and the Second War.
There are no engineers among them.
Their meditations waken the paths they make structure,
And slowly a messiah lifts an arm over the dawn.
The baubles of movement twinkle in the winters’ dry
Ecstatic air of all the terrestrial worlds in-system.
A vision, the temptation of hydraulics, may announce a birth.
Riding one frigate-weighted knuckle, among the cells
Of the other young librarians warmed by the circuits
That mother their brood, a monk writes in engine grease
The first interrogation of their matter and manner.
Outsiders who find desperation engaging the airlock
To seat themselves inside the Grand Cafetorium,
Whisper theories, presume size and complexity
May in fact be the only plan at work here. Might work.
One made it as far as the outer library
Before a novitiate halved him with a welding torch.
Patternicities (Lunar View J2857)
At the terminator, wreckage flickers
Before the lines dissipate in a camouflage
Light. The long tooth of noon is on the surface;
Reprieve—name of her blinding horn.
But even in this overload,
Closing an eye keeps
Nothing out, ballet of three bodies felt
More than seen anyway: mystery, cacoëthe,
And something that would burn with […]
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The Schiaparelli Stage
What we see from here does not exist
And what exists is
Translation’s failure at every distance,
How poets move to the mountains, curl up
With what they call The Inferno knowing
Full well allegory is an aesthetic mistake. […]
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Jacob Strautmann’s debut book of poems The Land of the Dead Is Open for Business is available from Four Way Books. Awarded a 2018 Massachusetts Poetry Fellowship by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Jacob Strautmann’s poems have appeared in Agni Magazine, Forklift, Ohio, Salamander Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Appalachian Journal, Southern Humanities Review, Appalachian Heritage, and Blackbird. www.jacobstrautmann.com
The poems “Kessler Syndrome,” “Patternicities,” and “Light Job” were inspired by the music of Dallas Campbell. Find more on Campbell and his music here: magichappened.bandcamp.com.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Jacob Strautmann