An Exciting New Venture
The furniture is a pale grey
that reflects onto the white walls.
And is a reminder of the apparently smooth
surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.
Behind the consultants is a flipchart
with four blue-veined words.
Probes have negotiated
Europa’s cracked-ice surface.
The delegates wear dark colours
and sober expressions.
The surface struggles to contain
a deep welling of ocean underneath.
The task is to explore those flipcharted words,
to map out implementable detail.
The ocean has hydrothermal vents,
where microbial life could form.
An exploration where ideas don't
stretch into digressions.
These vents - created by Jupiter’s gravity -
make cracks in the moon’s surface.
Any mention of delegates' agendas
will be frowned on by the consultants.
There is no surface life:
the radiation is too poisonous.
The delegates will ensure they merely do
more of the same: plus ça change ...
Europa’s surface cracks and freezes
and renews itself each 10 million years.
The consultants give radiant smiles,
they will take the credit or pass the blame.
Page(s) 16-17
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The