Parable of the Constellations

You took my idea about the stars and put your name on it

until dawn came down and did darkness.

Your money rose higher and replaced one star each day

until you were world famous and I was world obscure.

And ideas with no names on them are like musk oxen

which, when threatened, form a circle with newborns

in the middle, their butts a musky barrier against prey,

then become extinct by guns that shoot not only things, but links.

Does it even matter to you that once we both lay,

heads together, looking at that sky of orphans

crying with hunger, though their mouths were full of light

and wished them happy? I call that star the Cross of Ursa, after you.

Merridawn Duckler is a writer from Oregon and the author of three chapbooks, most recently MISSPENT YOUTH (rinky dink press.) New work in Seneca Review, Interim, Posit, Plume, Painted Bride Quarterly. Winner of the 2021 Beulah Rose Poetry Contest from Smartish Pace. She’s an editor at Narrative and the philosophy journal Evental Aesthetics.

Instagram: @merridawnduckler

Twitter: @MerridawnD