Gus Peterson

Weary of the world, you play Starfield

and again grow weary of the world.
Too much of it crushing you or
so little as to almost fly, but not really.
Only an illusion of weightlessness,
only ships of zealots and plunderers
buzzing like hornets around
the hive of every moon, the places
repeating after a while. There is only
so much memory to go around.
Some complain, call it lazy on the part
of the makers. You say accurate.
A warehouse is a warehouse.
A gun a thing that kills no matter
how you try and modify it.
Most of the planets too cold to care.
The alive ones already releasing
antibodies, to fight infection.
Even the map you patrol is the first
square of brownie lifted from
the galactic pan, just out of its oven.
Yes, more stars out there than grains
of sand. More than this desert,
this dismembered beach, the box
your father built from four two by sixes.
This hourglass, upended on his desk
now yours. A fact that used to both haunt
and break in the most sublime way,
back when you were yourself a universe
expanding into four dimensions,
when two were more than enough to
escape the gravity of any body caught
in the embrace of its only sun.

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Gus Peterson lives and writes in Maine. His work has been featured in or is forthcoming with Comstock Review, Pirene’s Fountain, New Verse News, Rattle and the Deep Water series in the Portland Press Herald edited by Megan Grumbling. A chapbook manuscript, Undiagnosis, was a finalist in The Poetry Box’s 2024 Chapbook Contest. A debut full length collection, Male Pattern, will be published in 2025 by Finishing Line Press.