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Planetarium of Love
John Surowiecki

We fly past all sorts of smudges soon to
be galaxies until it no longer makes sense
to tell her I think the world of her.
Too many worlds to choose from:
ringed worlds, airless worlds, moonless and moon-

besotted worlds, verdant and barren and doomed worlds,
worlds with eyes and red stripes, worlds where a teaspoon
of matter weighs as much as a world, twin worlds, worlds
that look like summer lanterns around a summer pond,
worlds of skunk cabbage and nest-stealing cowbirds,

dog worlds banished from every other dog world there is,
even our little red galaxy of crabapples by the
edge of the garden and every other world
that dots the nothingness of the universe with
something the nothingness knows nothing about.

—
John Surowiecki has written fourteen books of poetry in varying shapes and sizes; the most recent, The Place of the Solitaires: Poems from Titles by Wallace Stevens (Wolfson), was published in 2022. Prizes include: the Poetry Foundation Pegasus Award for verse drama, the Nimrod Pablo Neruda Prize, the Washington Prize, a Connecticut Poetry Fellowship, and the silver medal in the Sunken Garden National Competition. Also, his Pie Man won the 2017 Nilson Prize for a First Novel. Poetry publications include: Alaska Quarterly Review, AMP, Carolina Quarterly, Folio, Gargoyle, Margie, Oyez Review, Mississippi Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Redivider, Rhino, The Southern Review, Tupelo Quarterly, West Branch, and Yemassee.

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I Know Howl by Richard Eric Johnson
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