Kenton K. Yee

My eyes that once searched for saucers now stare at the big sky tulip. There are more, of course—all beyond reach or so it seems. I am of you, it says. The tulip doesn’t actually speak but it’s what I hear. Luminosity misleads. Twinkles are beyond reach. Why bother? I’m not athletic, I can’t fly, I’m not witty—all doubts I’ve indulged in.

      the pond sloshes
      with frog
      legs

So what keeps drawing my eyes back to the tulip? Where are its stems? Soil? Roots? Photosynthesis was happening three billion years before our ancestors could see. Stars shine brightest when they explode. The purple nebulae are mostly hot air.

      on hold, I nap
      wake up—
      same song

 

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KENTON K. YEE’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Kenyon Review, Threepenny Review, LIGEIA Magazine, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Rattle, and many others. A theoretical physicist, Kenton writes from Northern California.