New Mass

Hal y. Zhang

gather for announcements posthaste.

clear throat: the world has not changed.

all of you, how much of you that much has changed, in a sense. there is a new gospel and it is

good. take breaths from your centroid and repeat:

the body is light and fruit. the mind is color and water. we are not gross weights but energy and frenetic.

we will not

be defined by that which is not as fundamentally true as the stars.

we will not falter

when the dark overtakes.

and we will outlast because of art, for the sake

of art, because

of science, for the sake

of science.

Hal Y. Zhang is a physicist by day, and her poems have previously appeared or will appear in Strange Horizons, ellipsis..., Argot Magazine, and Lockjaw Magazine.