The Satellite, The Many-Headed God, Is Flung by Isaac Ginsberg Miller


 
 

in orbit around the cobalt sphere. It turns
a gaze below towards firm terrain, beholds
the ones who with belief made real this god
of watchers, all-sighted Icarus who,
inverted, does not burn, so reaches down
to trace plateaus and metropolitan
sweeps. Its numinous brainstem churns, yielding
names, coordinates, origins, wheels
within wheels, destinations. Ezekiel’s
premonition, millennia late,
guides the sleek needle of a warhead
down its vector, flies the pilot-less craft
full-zoom, lets blast Joshua’s trumpet,
winnowing the stones and bodies they once
sheltered. After, the pilot calls home to say
he will be late, his wife chopping broccoli
while their son, apart, flies his own craft
across the rippling glass, squealing in his headset
at each kill of foes randomized in server
antechambers then cloaked in opposing
colors. The many-headed god adds and deletes
zeroes from bank accounts, redacts,
ignores. When called to account for its decrees
it answers in ethereal code, bleeps
and dips of pitch reminiscent of a dial-up
modem. The god made mute, transmitting
the commandments of nowhere.

 
 
 

Isaac Ginsberg Miller‘s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Callaloo, The Collagist, Colorado Review, Sonora Review, The Shallow Ends, and Vinyl. His chapbook Stopgap won The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Chapbook Contest, and is forthcoming in 2019. Isaac earned an MFA in poetry at NYU, where he was a Goldwater fellow. Additionally, he has received fellowships from the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Ragdale Foundation. He is currently a PhD student in African American Studies at Northwestern University, where he is also a member of the Poetry and Poetics Graduate Cluster.