T.A. Noonan
Multiple Choice

 

What I remember from my study guide:

Antediluvian is an insult for great-aunts.
Proctor sounds a lot like proctologist.

Cystoscopy. Apoptosis. Prostate. Prostrate. Men that might have taught me their language withdrew without forwarding test scores. All that vocabulary I never had to repeat. No spelling bees, multiple choice. I failed every section

[ “the results aren’t good” ]

& place my hand to the scar on my mother’s breast      divot wide enough for 2 fingers      another surgery      it will be 4      perhaps an entire hand      in a space too small to tear with a pencil      my mom teaches me      her vocabulary      book closed      later I refresh the verbal section      pretend I’m learning cognates——

 

Sundog / Zodiac of a Fingernail

 

If you could clip me, I would be waxing crescent / Once I was a mouth, gibbous until I closed over you / You took my name from Ptolemy—terra australis—to balance me against something higher / My shape was all flats and ice / Katabatic winds rended my plateau at the edge / Interior, they moderated themselves / Sometimes the sun touched my white skin, and I burned like Brazil / My diamond dusts shimmered carnivale, radiation tricky as an open circuit / Now, this ridge slit through, a quick: something little, rough / The nail in front of your face slides under your waistband, parhelios to the snow / Parhelios to the snow, the nail in front of your face slides under your waistband / Now, this ridge slit through, a quick: something little, rough / My diamond dusts shimmer carnivale, radiation tricky as an open circuit / Sometimes I burn like Brazil when the sun touches my white skin, and the interior moderates itself / Katabatic winds rend my polar plateau at the edge / My shape is all flats and ice / You take my name from Ptolemy——terra australis——to balance me against something higher / At once I am a mouth, gibbous until I close over you / I could / would / being / wax crescent if you clip me

 

Predictable Contemplations of the Body as Planet as Body

 

It’s a formula, the body as planet as body.

[Not quite

2C4H10(g) + 13O2(g) → 8CO2(g) + 10H2O(g)

; stoichiometry is one part art, two parts math.

Balanced.]

Complex colonies of bacteria camp in human hair, but those unicellulars also live in the geyser’s sulfuric curve.

Low mass means less life retention. No atmosphere. Too smooth to stay that way. Cue the eruptions, quakes. Then, geological death; no energy to crank.

Fat people make better planets because they have gravitational pull. Large iron core. Magnetic fields blocking solar wind.

High metallicity in their stars, spitting off sparks, proplyds, secrets of the Drake equation.

The notion of a habitable zone may have to be expanded or discarded as too restricting.

The Fermi paradox refutes astrobiology’s assertion that I’m hot, and extrasolar bodies grow sexier every day.

Poets consider themselves habitable, unaware they’re the most hostile environments.