Greg Gose
Greg Gose is a writer from Phoenix, Arizona. He is a McNair Scholar and was the Editor in Chief of Eclipse Literary Journal for three years, received a residency for the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing in 2016, and is currently an MFA candidate at Northern Michigan University and an associate editor for Passages North. He loves space, sad things, and cats. Find him on Twitter @thedeadechoes
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In This One, I'm the Dead Cosmonaut and the Multiverse Both Exists and Doesn't Exist
I spent a lot of time wondering what it would be like to die
before looking at the Milky Way split wide on the horizon
or the moonlit silhouette of an airplane over
wheat fields carving the blue-black skyline with all those souls
headed to Chicago Thanksgivings, or Detroit, or maybe a place not like this one:
where there are no ghosts of middle school gymnasiums
or a father’s fists smearing holes in speckled drywall homes;
where there are no feral regrets nestled into the fibers of a suit and life
isn’t where breathing becomes an exercise in slow asphyxiation—
no more drowning, or cracked skin swathed in capillary roots,
no dry-rot embraces in a hammock out back of a rented apartment:
this is a place where all the colors of the world are the deep cedar
of your irises reflecting the sunlight on an August afternoon—
a place where dreams don’t bleed around the edges of miscarriage,
and the lung-stitched cough of waking slowly is only temporary;
I wonder if dying between these stars could cascade into that impossible
timeline where I’m not consumed by the remains of a damp sidewalk kiss,
where all the doorways of the world are condensed into one
moment: we’re together and hoping for beach-dream futures, or love
under a lighthouse beacon, or the one where it’s just us, laying together
in the sand, the dark of skin touched with perspiration,
caressed fabric and wind observing the stars and planes
overhead: I know there’s a version of me alive with you there
the other side of Orion, one that never left Earth. That never lost a child
and could wake any Thursday afternoon to a face so familiar, and I want it so badly
but this is not that reality. This one is me orbiting the beautiful collapse
of neutron stars until there is no air left to breathe.
before looking at the Milky Way split wide on the horizon
or the moonlit silhouette of an airplane over
wheat fields carving the blue-black skyline with all those souls
headed to Chicago Thanksgivings, or Detroit, or maybe a place not like this one:
where there are no ghosts of middle school gymnasiums
or a father’s fists smearing holes in speckled drywall homes;
where there are no feral regrets nestled into the fibers of a suit and life
isn’t where breathing becomes an exercise in slow asphyxiation—
no more drowning, or cracked skin swathed in capillary roots,
no dry-rot embraces in a hammock out back of a rented apartment:
this is a place where all the colors of the world are the deep cedar
of your irises reflecting the sunlight on an August afternoon—
a place where dreams don’t bleed around the edges of miscarriage,
and the lung-stitched cough of waking slowly is only temporary;
I wonder if dying between these stars could cascade into that impossible
timeline where I’m not consumed by the remains of a damp sidewalk kiss,
where all the doorways of the world are condensed into one
moment: we’re together and hoping for beach-dream futures, or love
under a lighthouse beacon, or the one where it’s just us, laying together
in the sand, the dark of skin touched with perspiration,
caressed fabric and wind observing the stars and planes
overhead: I know there’s a version of me alive with you there
the other side of Orion, one that never left Earth. That never lost a child
and could wake any Thursday afternoon to a face so familiar, and I want it so badly
but this is not that reality. This one is me orbiting the beautiful collapse
of neutron stars until there is no air left to breathe.
Commentary
Greg on "In This One, I’m the Dead Cosmonaut and the Multiverse Both Exists and Doesn’t Exist":
When I can’t sleep, I often find myself staring at the wall wondering about all the branching paths my life could have taken—how one different decision could have led me to a different state, a different city surrounded by different people. Maybe I chose to take comfort in numbers rather than words and tried to be a mathematician, or I got really into film and started directing. In this poem, I chose to pair this longing for a different reality with the childhood fantasy of becoming an astronaut, and imagined what that would look like. Would this version of me still be haunted by the same ghosts, still have the desire for another life? An astronaut floating alone in the void, wishing the memories of an abusive father or crowded high school assemblies could be traded in for a life with the person they’ve left behind. It is, at its core, a love poem to dead possibilities. Whenever anyone asks me what I write about, I tell them sad space things, and I hope this hits that mark.
Assistant Editor Jason Bates on "In This One, I’m the Dead Cosmonaut and the Multiverse Both Exists and Doesn’t Exist":
I feel the need to coin the term “Plinko Poem.” You know, Plinko, that “Price Is Right” game where the contestant would drop a thin puck down a peg board and as it bounced and zig-zagged down the board—the possible paths, endless at first—the contestant would be jumping up and down. Fingers crossed, hoping for some big money. The structure of Gose’s poem forces you to cascade through a fractured timeline, bouncing from stanza to stanza, unable to see the payoff at the end. . . until you do, and it’s definitely not big money.
When I can’t sleep, I often find myself staring at the wall wondering about all the branching paths my life could have taken—how one different decision could have led me to a different state, a different city surrounded by different people. Maybe I chose to take comfort in numbers rather than words and tried to be a mathematician, or I got really into film and started directing. In this poem, I chose to pair this longing for a different reality with the childhood fantasy of becoming an astronaut, and imagined what that would look like. Would this version of me still be haunted by the same ghosts, still have the desire for another life? An astronaut floating alone in the void, wishing the memories of an abusive father or crowded high school assemblies could be traded in for a life with the person they’ve left behind. It is, at its core, a love poem to dead possibilities. Whenever anyone asks me what I write about, I tell them sad space things, and I hope this hits that mark.
Assistant Editor Jason Bates on "In This One, I’m the Dead Cosmonaut and the Multiverse Both Exists and Doesn’t Exist":
I feel the need to coin the term “Plinko Poem.” You know, Plinko, that “Price Is Right” game where the contestant would drop a thin puck down a peg board and as it bounced and zig-zagged down the board—the possible paths, endless at first—the contestant would be jumping up and down. Fingers crossed, hoping for some big money. The structure of Gose’s poem forces you to cascade through a fractured timeline, bouncing from stanza to stanza, unable to see the payoff at the end. . . until you do, and it’s definitely not big money.