SurVision Magazine

I looked inside my head


vast empty hangar
maw of a just-landed spacecraft

i saw nothing there
but light
it hurt my eyes
i strained to see those triumphant
silhouettes of astronauts returned
from the rings of Saturn, with news
of the universe

but when
my eyes grew used to the light
there was no-one there
at all
not even an after-image
not even a shadow etched into the wall
as though
after a thermonuclear blast

just the unendurable
light





Mandy Macdonald is from Aberdeen, Scotland. Her poems appear in, e.g., Causeway/Cabhsair, The Curlew, Coast to Coast to Coast, Triadae, and The Curly Mind, as well as in Vaster than Empires anthology (Grey Hen, 2018), and in Multiverse, an anthology of science-fiction poetry (Shoreline of Infinity, 2018.)