Unborn
by Carrie Osborne

I’ve made myself a much smaller crisis.
Marched and swept the floor. Walked
the dog, moved my money.
Lately, the ground’s been letting it out.
I haven’t stored enough water, but I keep
a pair of shoes near the bed. I think of them
as sighs, translated by outer layers, coming from
the alloy core, nickel and iron spinning at an unseen rate.
We have reason to believe it’s there.
Machines can feel it; our instruments sense
existence. On this day and these coordinates
on the crust, the freeways were filled with feet.
The ships did not leave the harbor. I gathered
spare change from the dresser for the jar and
I don’t know what kind of world I can give you. Guaranteed,
there will be Big Bang in your blood,
the elements of every structure:
a small tent-city,
a red and wholly unpopulated planet.

Carrie Osborne was born and raised in Kailua, Hawaii. She earned a B.A. in Communications from Saint Mary’s College in 2003, an M.A. in Teaching from the University of San Francisco in 2006, and is currently a poet in the M.F.A. program at Saint Mary’s College. She was a middle school Language Arts teacher at Claire Lilienthal School for four years prior to entering the M.F.A. program. She lives in Oakland, California.