Pollen
Rose Lemberg
When I was a child, rocketships bloomed between my palms like dandelions.
Launched, they hovered in the air before take-off
as if they’d still cling to me; but they couldn’t
and I couldn’t.
I have it on good authority that many reached the stars, populated them
with pollen cosmonauts I made from the tundra in bloom
that clings to thin life above the chasm of permafrost.
If we ever leave Earth I think we’ll find them
blooming as desperately on exoplanets
having thawed a shallow ledge with my heat.
Rose Lemberg is a queer, bigender immigrant from Ukraine, Russia, and Israel. Their stories and poems have appeared in Lightspeed's Queer Destroy Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Unlikely Story, Uncanny, and other venues. Rose's work has been a finalist for the Nebula,Elgin, Rhysling, Crawford, and other awards. Their debut poetry collection, Marginalia to Stone Bird, is available from Aqueduct Press (2016). For a full bibliography, please visit http://roselemberg.net.
