Break Up
Across the event horizon
of a black hole, the relative
distance between parts
increases, accelerates
until hypergravity
extrudes the component
particles. Spaghettifies
them.
This is conjecture.
No one could witness
the sforzando of destruction
and report back. And perhaps
celestial bodies deconstruct
more cleanly than humans,
stretch down, pulled by
an invisible other, dismantled
of will, the screech of release
as un-knowable as the other
side of a slammed door.
James Ducat’s poetry has appeared in Penn Review, Carve, Bellingham Review, CutBank, Apogee, and elsewhere, and has been featured on Verse Daily. His chapbook A Field of Nopes is from Bamboo Dart Press. His full-length collection Debris Orbits was a semi-finalist for the Ashland Poetry Press Richard Snyder Memorial Prize. Find him at jamesducat.com James holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and is associate professor of English and creative writing at Riverside City College, where he advises the literary journal MUSE. Find him at jamesducat.com.