THREE POEMS

BEYOND NEPTUNE

i track the blue ball

floating haphazard

through space, knowing it

will only  find more

restlessness in its way,

and in the distance

my father is returning

from just beyond neptune,

he gives nothing away

in his face, and i know

he’ll remain silent

just to make me

ask him again, but this time

i refuse, and by now

that blue ball

has traveled

well beyond the length

of our silence,

and if i turn

to look, i’ll see

but a blue speck,

so i choose inaction,

and my father drifts

closer while my heart

drifts off as a speck,

destined for a lonely comet

WE WERE FORGED FROM DEAD STARS

somewhere in our collective memory we recall gravity

firing collapsed hydrogen and helium, the fusion of a

mass born to burn millennia despite an unsteady core,

which is such a relief: knowing we were made to burn

imperfect, our beauty predicated on inherent lack,

left to build our own foundations, expedient illusions,

once we hammered in the last brick we realized there

was no such thing as security, in spite of great efforts

to build great walls, property lines, our only inevitable

destiny, return to radioactive soup, that rises and falls,

with the blood of stars, blood of ancestors, pulse of life,

get ready to cast off your wealth, your skin, your attach

-ments to the void, because in here we’re all equal

swimmers, churning an effervescent vortex, propelling

endlessly forward our children, and their children,

and their children, and their children

THIS SIDE OF ANYTHING

    is it fair to write a whole tome to the parent who left, when the one who stayed sustained

   the wounds from the backlash, and the four limbs of the two children having wrapped

   their tiny arms around both ankles, because to stop a mother is to stop time, i’ve thought

   of a thousand ways to say thank you but they’re all inadequate, and don’t measure up to

   odes already penned, so i guess now is a good time to tell you i retract my limbs because

   i want you to know love again, and the blush of romance in that shade of chocolate and

   roses, and if you can forgive me, then you can feel the orange of the sun, and hear the

   chorus of a million stars giving you a glowing ovation, because mothering is the most

   difficult job you could have taken on, and you are the baddest bitch this side of anything,

   and i salute you with a glass of red in one hand, and awe in the other

---

Seth Leeper is a queer poet. A 2022 Brooklyn Poets Fellow and Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sycamore Review, River Styx, The Journal, Salamander, and The Account. He holds an M.A. in Special Education from Pace University and B.A. in Creative Writing and Fashion Journalism from San Francisco State University. He lives and teaches in Brooklyn, NY. He tweets @sethwleeper.