Pg. 46
Poetry by Joshua St. Claire
The Asteroid Miner’s Life
The asteroid miner’s life—stink of the Skunk
Tank—Sphingomonas desiccabilis
shitting Lanthanides. Playing dice to scrimshank
like home—but we’re not home. We’re just quidnuncs
waiting for comm windows to open up the abyss
of the asteroid miner’s life. The bunks stink
with miner funk—just a janky world shrunk
to this tank of bacterial bliss.
Sifting Lanthanides with centrifuges clanking
this shit—our lives—into somebody else’s bank.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this—
the asteroid miner’s life—spelunking
drillbot holes for ore to feed the funk
in the Skunk Tank. The thought of what we missed . . .
Lanthanides? Give me a violet-covered bank
over a running stream and bending to drink
what once was rain—not this recycled piss.
My asteroid miner’s life—traded for a trunk
of Lanthanides and dead violet dreampunk.