Marc J. Frazier

Patches of Living Matter

            –1997

There is no PAST anybody can get to, to alter things or even to know what those things were but there is definitely a future, we are already in it. –Joyce Carol Oates

Pathfinder

Radar reads distance to surface.
Landed, airbags deflate, retract.
Three petals unfold on the red planet to reveal rover, camera, antenna.

119 million miles away, in 3D goggles, a man moves cursor to rock.

Sojourner comes to life, her x-ray spectrometer reads a rock’s chemical elements.


Girl X

On a Cabrini Green ramp—a nine-year-old face down, barefoot in dirty snow.
Symbols crawl her stomach, t-shirt tightly ‘round her neck, corduroys pulled down, a
     petroleum substance (roach repellent?) found in mouth and throat.
Bruises ring her neck like the rosy.


Pathfinder

Antenna sends encoded images to Earth –electronic cameras beam them–translations
     seen on the internet as salmon sky, hills, rims of craters.


Girl X

She’s an infant, less than one–a feeding tube.
Nurses read Pocahontas to her.
A voice box on her wheelchair answers: turning her head triggers yes or no.
She listens to music from Waiting to Exhale.


Pathfinder

Are there patches of living matter on the red planet?
Might unknown organisms be transported to Earth?

Currently, the atmosphere is thin, oxygenless, with weak, dusty winds, rusty plateaus.
Rocks are celebrities: Barnacle Bill, Scooby Doo, Yogi.


Girl X

The doctor says, one day at a time.

The suspect sketches children, paints pictures on t-shirts.

The doctor says it is unlikely she will remember.
Sometimes this is a blessing, a spokesperson adds.

The audience nods.
Reporters, all of us, agree to her namelessness.