ALL Review is pleased to announce Jess L. Parker’s poem "Saturn Rising" has been chosen as the runner-up for the 2021 ALL Favorites contest.
We had much to drink and more
to climb. There was a moonrock
and radish uphill; sliced and wide
open was the sky.
We wanted to see the satellite,
a teetering overgrown saucer
twitching as if on its way to your tongue
for a taste— a new datum, to be loved
as intricately as Saturn’s rings are particular
up close, and held as tightly as they are
together from afar. That night was our
telescope. We scraped our knees inching
toward the lens, wiping the clouds clean
to witness tomorrow poke holes
through sky, flicking light on a still-blue
pond. Or are they pebbles on the bottom
blinking up?
Their reflection, a Morse code city,
paging constellations with their
off —
on.
Originally published in Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Museletter, November 7th, 2019
