Underground Poem by Jared Carter

The two children - abruptly shoved off the platform into the path of an oncoming train - are not in that instant crushed by the wheels, but instead dissolved against the event horizon of a black hole suddenly materialized out of another galaxy.

Its unknowable surface accepts each of them. The girl becomes a dove caught by the softest, lightest of nets, the boy a silver fish motionless in a riverbank weir.

The subway tunnel with its overhead coffers, the platform, the people standing along the edge, the train braking to a stop - all of this translates into long filaments of irretrievable data.

Agamemnon announces that the wind has risen, and the Achaeans can now set their sails.


First published in Flying Island.