Atomic Ghosts

She’s tethered to me, I’m lashed to you,
you’re snapped onto him, and he’s
gone, all gone.

I suppose we’re all goners
in the Let’s-Make-An-Us game,
no longer able to start a match anew,
toting our baggage along—
either dreams-gone-wrong
or unreal ideals that we steal
from the stories we hear.

The need to pair starts at the atom.
We’re just adhering to nature—
free-radical reactions taking what we need
from what we next rub up against,

pinball-banging about
with only a modicum of control, hoping for
the right whir and flash of lights to show
we’ve won, or at least done
a small bit right,
for now.

---

J. Scott Price’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The MacGuffin, Red Coyote, Sierra Nevada Review, vox poetica, O-Dark-Thirty Literary Journal, and Wrath-Bearing Tree. He was a finalist for the 2017 Brian Turner Literary Arts Prize, and served a three-week fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Price holds an MFA in Writing and a Certificate in Publishing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He was an infantryman for twenty-four years.

[image: NASA/JPL-Caltech]