Celestial Mechanics, A Sonnet By Melissa Tyndall

Note: This was a poem that began after my husband and I watched two movies. 

One about the apocalypse (sort of) and one manga movie about zombies. Both 

just happened to quote TS Eliot's The Hollow Men. From there, I took on a prompt 

to reverse the meaning of an already established poem. That exercise produced this.

Celestial Mechanics

Don’t write us as a comet,

its coma laden with dust

and ice. Don’t write a sonnet

about its white tail-end thrust

against the skyline. We’re not

a stellar comma, or rest,

but a full stop. Not the dot,

dot, dot of heartbeat in chest,

ellipses on Orion’s

belt, or an orbiting rock’s

return. We’re static ions,

colon on our bedside clock,

nebular burnout – so don’t.

I won’t write it if you won’t.