Christina M. Rau: 4 Poems

Indium

When it cries it’s not a weep
but a cracking high pitched
slow controlled  The crystals
twin and twin again once halved
so the halves keep halving along
fractals proportional to each degree
bent  It can wet glass gloss over a fine
sheen call across a meadow from a hill
vibrant siren sound increasing until
so pitched it returns back silent
still a whole but different still
itself but new doubled over on
itself redefined  If only it could
remember, put the parts back
together.

​How A Sound Can Shatter Glass

Resonance: the effect of air waves on other objects
Vibration: the quick motion of an object that creates waves in the air

When the oscillator caused the
neighborhood to shake and left
the police station in shards,
they smashed the machine with a sledgehammer.

Resonance: the lasting impression left in the ears when the air falls quiet
Vibration: the energy objects create when they lodge themselves in memory

The damage was done: the pipes burst— 
​everything was a flood.

Resonance: the chord hit in the heart or brain
Vibration: tendency to tremor

Its own walls tumbled down.

Resonance: resolve
Vibration: all that’s left

​For the Full Moon That Will Be Pink

for Kepler 1625b

​The oxymoron is this:

​a moon orbiting an exoplanet

         that orbits a star other than

                  ​​the sun— 

         ​that’s an extrasolar planet

​ignoring our star and attracting a satellite

                  ​​of its own.

There are even bigger things out there

         ​bigger than we could ever comprehend.

Christina M. Rau is the author of the Elgin Award-winning poetry collection Liberating The Astronauts and the chapbooks WakeBreatheMove and For The Girls, I. She serves as Poet in Residence for Oceanside Library and was the 2020 Poet of the Year for Walt Whitman Birthplace. When she's not writing, she's teaching yoga or watching the Game Show Network.