Poetry by Ashely Adams

Hawking Radiation
 
Here we are at the end of the universe
where even apocalypse unravels,
the light of a scythe cutting
away its own existence.
 
Nobody told us what
comes after the kingdom,
to be free of the word
spiraled into our foreheads.
 
The gates rusted, the last
sound their screech, their yawn.
We’ll build a new god
in the emptiness left behind.

Neutrino
 
To catch a ghost:
 
Bury your eyes in caves.
Weigh down water with
the bones of cracked suns,
quick, before they slip
through crust, the clouds.
Trace helium tap-dance
on your subtle mirrors.
Ask the spirits how to
haunt golden spirals,
the spaces between
our smallest cores.

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Ashely Adams is an MFA candidate in nonfiction at the University of South Florida. Her work has appeared in Flyway, Heavy Feather Review, Fourth River, Anthropoid, Permafrost and others. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was selected as Best in Show for the Antioch Writers Workshop Fiction Fellowship contest.