I.
How gruesome
that rabbit’s foot is,
tucked
into your launch suit’s pocket,
your luck tethered to
a clutch of severed bones
and genetically altered fur.
How gruesome
that rabbit’s foot is,
tucked
into your launch suit’s pocket,
your luck tethered to
a clutch of severed bones
and genetically altered fur.
Real rabbits,
the ship’s computer insists,
did not glow in the dark.
the ship’s computer insists,
did not glow in the dark.
I asked you once,
stars bounding behind us-
jackrabbit quick that leap from
Moon to Mars
from Mars to deeper space-
I asked you
if you ever imagined that foot’s
forgotten host,
leg locked midstride,
the wild-eyed terror,
that final, desperate
snap
of ancestral memory,
soft grass,
soft sun,
soft bodies secure in warrens
no living creature has seen in
over a hundred years.
stars bounding behind us-
jackrabbit quick that leap from
Moon to Mars
from Mars to deeper space-
I asked you
if you ever imagined that foot’s
forgotten host,
leg locked midstride,
the wild-eyed terror,
that final, desperate
snap
of ancestral memory,
soft grass,
soft sun,
soft bodies secure in warrens
no living creature has seen in
over a hundred years.
Can you fathom that
dead Earth memory?
dead Earth memory?
Have you ever heard
a real rabbit
scream?
a real rabbit
scream?
II.
A Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still Life:
A Monkey and a Dog with Dead Game and Fruit
or
A Dead Hare and Partridges and Other Birds in a Niche
or
Dead Swan
A Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still Life:
A Monkey and a Dog with Dead Game and Fruit
or
A Dead Hare and Partridges and Other Birds in a Niche
or
Dead Swan
Over and over you view them
on the ship’s computer:
broken limbs
spilling fur and feathers
onto clustered
grapes and greens.
Rifles.
Peaches.
An ill-fated songbird.
A furious spaniel guarding
her quarry as if the dead could ever
leap, unbidden, away from her
and into oily darkness.
on the ship’s computer:
broken limbs
spilling fur and feathers
onto clustered
grapes and greens.
Rifles.
Peaches.
An ill-fated songbird.
A furious spaniel guarding
her quarry as if the dead could ever
leap, unbidden, away from her
and into oily darkness.
Perhaps, you whisper to me
in the ship’s artificial burrows,
that smudge on the screen
is really the artist,
immortalized
in a cony’s sightless pupil,
Jan Weenix
hopping wildly with us
from star to
star.
in the ship’s artificial burrows,
that smudge on the screen
is really the artist,
immortalized
in a cony’s sightless pupil,
Jan Weenix
hopping wildly with us
from star to
star.
You fashion yourself into
an inverted Dutchman.
an inverted Dutchman.
How fortunate the crackled varnish
did not erase you.
did not erase you.
Your luck, you whisper
deluded and desperate,
must be holding.
deluded and desperate,
must be holding.
III.
A rabbit’s death is thin,
a screech stretched to gossamer,
ripping high-pitched
like aluminum
peeling away from
a shuttle’s belly
upon reentry,
(oh no, you whisper, no,
but in space we were
always,
always
silent).
A rabbit’s death is thin,
a screech stretched to gossamer,
ripping high-pitched
like aluminum
peeling away from
a shuttle’s belly
upon reentry,
(oh no, you whisper, no,
but in space we were
always,
always
silent).
We tumble from darkness into
blinding light
and gravity.
blinding light
and gravity.
A rabbit’s death is dislocation,
a sound to be severed,
the pain of it
unbearable.
We must disregard it,
if we are to survive here.
There is no room
in this new world
for leporine grief.
Still, as we descend,
our landing lucky and soft,
you hold the
remaining paw
of that dead creature close.
You count the bones
beneath that phosphorescent fur.
a sound to be severed,
the pain of it
unbearable.
We must disregard it,
if we are to survive here.
There is no room
in this new world
for leporine grief.
Still, as we descend,
our landing lucky and soft,
you hold the
remaining paw
of that dead creature close.
You count the bones
beneath that phosphorescent fur.
You imagine your rabbit real,
the comfort of it,
in the end,
tied,
inextricably,
to the forgetting.
the comfort of it,
in the end,
tied,
inextricably,
to the forgetting.
(Editors’ Note: “Soft, Your Grief, and Leporine” is read by Erika Ensign on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 65A.)
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© 2025 Lora Gray
