I’ll Cry Later

Lauren McBride

I’ll Cry Later

the sound of hail

    struggling into
    an oversized spacesuit
    yours, my love

pounding our tiny star ship

    ship’s air leaking
    seconds left
    to seal the suit

hull breach

    raging micrometeor storm
    ripped through my suit
    and you

____________

Lauren McBride finds inspiration in faith, family, nature, science, and membership in the SFPA. Nominated for the Best of the Net, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars Awards, her poetry has appeared in dozens of publications including Asimov’s, Dreams & Nightmares, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. She enjoys swimming, gardening, baking, reading, writing, and knitting scarves for our troops.

Author’s Backstory: A photo prompt of a man wearing his pants below his bottom (how did this ever become a style???) led to thoughts of oversized clothes. For sci-fi purposes, I imagined an oversized spacesuit and the need to be in one. The poem took shape from there. The title came last.

The form used is called a split sequence. Here are my notes from when (as far as I know) I introduced the split sequence to speculative poets in Scifaikuest, print edition, February 2022.

Split Sequence: This titled poem consists of four haiku related by theme, but unlike a joined poem, the fourth haiku does not fall in succession, but rather is split with each of its lines preceding an indented, stand-alone haiku.

I first saw this form in a poem titled “The Elder (A Split Sequence),” which appeared in Failed Haiku issue 51, March 2020, written by Bryan Rickert (co-editor of Failed Haiku) and Peter Jastermsky. Jastermsky invented the form in 2017. For more information, look for Just Dust and Stone, a book of split sequence collaborations by Peter Jastermsky and Bryan Rickert, published by Velvet Dusk Publishing in 2021.

Editor’s Notes/Image Credit: Symbolic image—a couple that are disintegrating [pngwing.com] in a meteor shower in space [wallpaperflare.com]; images combined in PowerPoint

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One Response to I’ll Cry Later

  1. John Baumgartner says:

    Thanks Wendy

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