Five Poems by Emmie Christie

 

Morning Centaur vs. Evening Centaur 

 

In the morning, Harriet the Centaur selected her groceries  

with a purpose in mind. She plucked the whistle-greens  

and the tarot beans off the shelves, pairing them with  

walnut milk and pears in their prime, gathered  

in the light of the spine-covered moon. She examined 

her ferry-berries like a jeweller, her magnifying lens flicking  

over her eyes, choosing only the brightest  

and best of the fruit that fly the tongue to the skies.  

Harriet hauled it all home and kept it cold in the glacier  

near her cave, then she was ready to trek into her day.  

She hefted her pickaxe with the orcs to carve  

more caves in the mountain, to make room for her herd  

that would join her come spring. She dug and she sweated  

and she laughed with Roar, the orc so named for the way  

her voice rumbled like the sea crashing the shore,  

but her words remained sweet as ferry-berries on toast.  

And when the sun swept its rays towards world’s end,  

Harriet the Centaur travelled back to her cave, stared  

at her groceries she chose that morning and sighed.  

“What were you thinking?” she said to the Morning part  

of herself, from before all the sweat and the heat  

and the grime. “I don’t have time for this!”  

Yes, you do, Morning said. It would only take thirty 

Minutes to soak the tarot beans. And while you wait, 

You wash the whistle-greens, then peel and mash the pears— 

But the Evening part of her scoffed. “Ha! You think I want  

To do all that now? When I just want to sprawl on the ridge  

and watch the Dragon Brawl? It’s Brandy Fire against  

Vodka Vow, and it starts in forty minutes! No, thirty-six now!” 

Harriet shifted her back horse hip, then her front human one.  

Then a voice like a sea crashing on the shore echoed 

Through her cave. “Hey, Hare! Wanna watch the Brawl  

and get Cave-Dash together?” And Roar’s face waited  

like a bright bird in the heather. No . . . Morning Harriet  

tried to say, but Evening outmatched her in a spectacular way.  

“How about Toasted Wheatgrass spread with red pepper sauce,  

and button mushrooms all sliced on top?” 

“It’s like you read my mind,” Roar said, standing tall, 

So, they ordered Cave-Dash and settled in for the Brawl.  

 

 

 

 

The Blight in Our Rooms 

 

The hoarding of our neglected synapses, our assortment  

of what once mattered, and is now forgotten –  

that hornet’s nest of agony from twelve  

years ago, when we searched for that 

paper for hours and ended up missing the deadline 

for family leave for our father’s death,  

or when that sweet guy we’d known for years 

soured into that fermented concoction of  

podcasting asshole coupled with the delicate notes of  

echo chambers that we finally managed to forget 

after years of repression – those forgotten things –  

they grew into something in another dimension, 

the same as when squirrels forget where they buried 

their hoard of acorns and trees are born, 

Those things that we shoved under the giant rug 

Of Don’t Think About It, they sprouted roots into the ground 

of our collective subconscious and needled into  

the dimensions, the other worlds of those around us, 

those that walked and talked and smiled around us, 

those beings that we pretended around, and laughed with, 

and said, “How you holding up,” and we said, “Great,” 

those derelict growths caught hold of the rugs of their minds, 

and bunched up around their tables’ legs,  

and grew, and grew, that abandoned ache of that one night 

now aching in their thighs, and too late we realize 

when we ask, “how you holding up?” 

They say “Great,” the way we’ve have done for so long, 

with that forced upturn of lips, that distant look, that folding in 

of shoulders, like they’re wrapping the shawl  

of disillusionment around themselves while looking out to sea. 

And we know that those things we have forgotten, 

that infestation of evasion, the sighs, and clenched cries 

we hold inside ourselves, has grown over into  

those we thought we couldn’t reach. And this is what  

drives us to clean out the blighted rooms of our thoughts, 

not because it hurts us to breathe in the rot, but that it does  

not stop with us, it will spread into other realms where  

it did not begin, and so we begin  

to care for ourselves at last. 

 

 

 

 

Oh, To Be 

 

Oh, to be a sun-soaked cat, 

blinking at 

the afternoon, 

the worries, they’d scurry 

into their hidey-holes 

and dare not poke their noses out. 

 

Oh, to be a wind-swept finch,  

plumage rich  

as a soaring flag, 

gliding through the grasping trees, 

rising free 

of war and rags.  

 

Oh, to be a weightless whale, 

the holy grail 

of buoyancy,  

for though I’d bear the burdens of 

the world’s largest living thing,  

the depths, they’d hold me up because 

 

I’d sing to them, and they to me. 

 

 

 

 

Perfect Sky 

 

What is it about expanse 

That engages our discovery 

A mountain range, or caverns vast 

Waiting, waiting under our feet?  

Why the sudden urge to extend 

Into whorls of glaciers’ frozen seas, 

To descend the icy depths,  

Or climb the sky and drift all free?  

The infinite calls to finite souls, 

To glide across a grain of sand 

On a galactic microscope, 

We stand, we stand, 

We dip our hand, 

How deep does the ocean go?  

The question shakes our primal spines, 

And lightning jolts our thoughts outside 

Of what we think of what we see. 

Books and plays show further places, 

Bigger skies and larger spaces, 

Some of us? We cannot stay 

Inside the same old shallow grave— 

We grasp for golden heavens new, 

For why? For why? We do not know, 

Only that we must explore, 

We must float through the giant doors,  

Oh, the itch to grasp at what’s beyond, 

The need to swim in giant ponds  

Where the horizon stretches out its arms, 

Always farther than sight can reach— 

Why do we have this crying need? 

Say, if we ever do touch down 

And connect to somewhere that we’ve found, 

Maybe we can locate that realm, 

That cosmic void inside ourselves 

And make a home, and build a nest,  

And settle down inside our chests,  

We can smile at those that sail by, 

And wave them past, and tell them why, 

Why we kept our perfect sky.   

 

 

 

 

Bodies Below 

 

Let me hold your anger till you can breathe again. 

Let me dry you off with a towel of sunlight, 

Let me wipe your tears with the washcloth of  

a waning moon. I will wring it out into the sea 

so they will see the depth of what they have wrought. 

 

Let me keep you warm with a constellation campfire. 

Draw your eyes up to connect the dots between 

the bodies above and reflect. When will they bestow  

the same respect to the bodies below, the earthly stars  

and the rooted Mars next to you and I? 

 

When will they regard the autonomy of a woman’s hard 

decision with the same religion of just looking up,  

with the same faith and leaping to conclusions 

That they do to us? They won’t. 

 

Hold.  

 

Let me hold your anger till you can breathe again. 

The storm is coming, and they cannot hide 

from this swelling tide—from this wrath filling up  

The dam of the damned, we will rise—the crest  

of our combined disrespected constellations 

pulling the current events back. 

 

Your honour, let the record show the worth  

and value of the bodies both above and below.

Emmie Christie’s work includes practical subjects, like feminism and mental health, and speculative subjects, like unicorns and affordable healthcare. Her novel "A Caged and Restless Magic" debuted February 2024. She has been published in Daily Science Fiction, Infinite Worlds Magazine, and Flash Fiction Online, among others. She also narrates audiobooks for Audible and loves bringing stories to life out loud as well as on the page. Find her at www.emmiechristie.com, her monthly newsletter, or on TikTok.