Carry On
Mars is bookless.
Pageless. It lacks pulp.
Sensors read rocks and data rolls
on metal wheels over metal
and mineral dust, but books
are useless. A waste
of cargo space, they say.
Mars-bound adventurers pack snacks,
but Jules Verne is decomposing.
Bring nothing that steals your oxygen.
Words can be digital.
Audiobooks abound.
Verne lives again!
Hear his reanimated voice
on the planet he never imagined
we’d land on. We don’t need
our books to breathe. We
don’t need our books
to decompose. We don’t
need excess baggage.
Brian Garrison
Brian U. Garrison lives under a tall, leafy tree in Portland, Oregon. His chapbook Micropoetry for Microplanets (Space Cowboy Books) celebrates the small-to-medium rocks that circle the sun, such as Pluto and Ceres. He can be found volunteering for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, eating vegan biscuits and gravy at Shoofly Cafe, or online at bugthewriter.com.