Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday.

the michelson-morley experiment

my brain isn’t working anymore
it’s lost in a sea of ether
the way they used to think
everything was—all matter
all energy—all light
floating in a sea of ether

someone showed me a
photo they took today
of a one-legged pigeon
then a few minutes later
they said they took a photo
of a one-legged man
I instantly reacted
to the pain—the tragedy
but they pointed
at the stoic stance
the chill attitude of both
man and bird
then the photographer
rhapsodized over these
seeming symbols of
new york city resilience
that kind of grit that laughs
at adversity

yet all my limbs
are intact and
my mind is swimming
in a sea of ether
could it be
I had an unknown
psychic amputation

I hear the words
sweetie and babe
pulsing in my head
like an untranslatable code
repetitive sounds with all
the meaning seeping
out like tea from a
suddenly discovered
crack in your favorite cup
leaving less and less
til emptiness

the words: home
family, love, equality
security, peace follow
flowing through the cracks
floating in the ether sea

Wanda Phipps is a writer, performer, and translator living in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of nine books of poetry, including Mind Honey (Autonomedia, 2021), Field of Wanting: Poems of Desire (BlazeVOX, 2008), and Wake-Up Calls: 66 Morning Poems (Soft Skull Press, 2004). Her poetry has been translated into Ukrainian, Hungarian, Arabic, Galician, and Bangla. She has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Theater Translation Fund, and others. As a founding member of Yara Arts Group, she has collaborated on numerous theatrical productions presented in Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Siberia, and at La MaMa, E.T.C. in New York City.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx