No Disposals

Scott Flanagan

21st Century Allegory of Hope

Feeding words in to a Black Hole while
I stand in the garden, outside this house
on the single hill that is Port Chalmers.

It is only a small Black Hole, domestic
in scale to some of its kind, the size of
a cat or large hedgehog maybe.

I smile as my arm lengthens, pulls
away from my body towards the
singularity, and at just the precise

moment I release the word from my
fingers—I pull away my arm from
that ferocious, voracious gravity—

and the word, though static, stretches
and stretches, interminably stretches
and then disappears.