[Issue 2024.70]

‘The Ships That Sang’, Jess Cho

Art © 2024 Toeken

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They set off as a pod of searchers,
cargo safely stowed in bellied holds,
keratin filters cleared of uninvited krill.
Food served through silvered bladders
and siphon hoses, with slick black oil
once the death of organic ancestors who taught
these metal newborns how to sing.

They crossed this ocean side by side
and song by song,
each static blurt, each click a memory
held within the beat of solid, piston hearts.
The journey vast, unlimited by boundaries
of continents and cheerless rock;
they faced an archipelago of stars
cut by reefs of spinning worlds, unsung.

But now their humpbacked hulls drift through
the endless void of space, a singularity apart.
Lost and fallen prey to cold black depths,
where echos of their clicks press on, waves of sound
unheeded and unheard. We feel them deep
within her belly, and know the saline sting of tears
as the radio spouts transmission lines of grief.

We sit at portholes, watch the light of stars and miss
the gentle bio-luminescence we pull from memories
of this once proud ship. We listen to her songs,
tremulous and seeking, her calls unanswered,
her pod-mates scattered, alone, afraid, confounded
by the enormity of this ocean without rules.
Ancestors whisper into titanium brains: swim!

And they do, sound-blind and thrashing,
and come screaming into atmospheres
and biospheres and hydrospheres
and beach themselves
looking for home.

© 2024 Jess Cho

[Issue 2024.70]

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