"Citizen of the Cosmos" by Cindy Rinne

Citizen of the Cosmos

She locks me in the musty bookstore alone with Poetry, Fantasy, and Art. The window sign reads backwards under the carved streetlamp. I feel the light of the universe upon me, an asteroid burns. Inside my eye sockets, flashlights dim in the yellow glow. Sad that images from Mars stop transmitting. I swoop to touch every title card like a list poem and control this intricate cosmos. Feline hides, not having to please. Breathe in, sit on the floor. Breathe out, reach for a book. I discover a graphic novel— part fantasy, part manga— with smooth paper. The smell of time / non-time. Where do I fit in the story? It’s raining harder. This mirror cave buckles. I push back dusty corpses. Objects fuse and crush. Yell to escape the letterpress past. Forget how to spell or to cast one. Is that hail? I have pillows for lungs. Pages turn in my veins. Alphabets as tongue. I own my body etched from a generation of stars. Lights flash at the edge of my sight. She purchased scraps for the cat. The latch catches.

CINDY RINNE

Cindy Rinne creates art and writes in San Bernardino, CA. She is Poet-in-Residence for the Neutra Institute Museum and Gallery in Silver Lake, CA. Cindy is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of seven books: Mapless, with Nikia Chaney (Cholla Needles Press), Moon of Many Petals (Cholla Needles Press), Listen to the Codex (Yak Press), and others. She was a finalist for the 2016 Hillary Gravendyk Prize. Her poetry appeared or is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, unpsychology magazine, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, The Halcyone Literary Review, several anthologies, and others. Her website is www.fiberverse.com.

Headshot: George Hammons

Photo Credit: Staff