Extracts from text

From ‘Black Dog Launch’:

Six came, a small constellation
or asteroid field that pock marked
the house with shooting memories
of pell-mell furry friends

dancing new life

the shuttle aborted
as blood and placenta spilled
across our small hearth
their first, chaotic wake

From ‘The Eunuch Zheng He’s 300 Ships’:

‘we choose to go to the moon
not because [it is] easy
but because [it is] hard’

(I heard that speech
at a ’91 rave
a vision remade
as ecstatic nostalgia)

the stars within our grasp
the moon beneath our hands
the ordered peace of the heavens
a music of the spheres

From ‘A Prince of the Broken Towers’:

Each crater is a memory
of a meteor’s punch

our minds make eyes, a
smile

from wounds

To the Chinese –
two black eyes
the moon’s a battered wife
a broken spouse