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

Spock Is Not a Myth
with Leonard Nimoy

Who would be a free citizen of a healthy republic?
Who would carry the burden of a Federation?

With those plastic ears?
With those ancestral bones?

Who would live through a civil war
and agree these things are at cross-purposes?

Does the shiny exterior not reveal
the corrosive action beneath?

And what of that lost cargo?
Which captain would apportion it out?

Either the fat man who plays Chopin
on a zither with his index finger,

or the tramp who wanders
home with only one flapping shoe?

Perhaps the green dancing woman
with that twitch in her lip?

Or the overblown lizard
with the roving simian eye?

For some reason, tonight,
Earth seems in low orbit.

Marc Vincenz is a poet, fiction writer, translator, editor, musician, and artist. He has published over 50 books of poetry, fiction and translation. His more recent poetry collections include, A Splash of Cave Paint, The King of Prussia is Drunk on Stars, Spells for the Wicked, All the Tricks of Language, and IRØNCLAD.  His translation of Swiss poet and novelist Klaus Merz’ selected poems, An Audible Blue, received the 2023 Massachusetts Book Prize for Translated Literature. He translates from German, Romanian, French and Spanish. His own work has been translated into many language

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