2 Poems by Kai Jensen

Packing for outer space

Take pictures of your loved ones,
a dry clod from your garden,
a tuft of fur from your companion animal.
Take warm underwear, sunscreen, moonscreen.
Take dark glasses in case a supernova
bursts out unexpectedly. Take
gel to prevent zero gravity bad hair.
Take a packet of those cheap stale biscuits
they put on tables in meetings: you’ll find
up there they taste much better.
Take a book of names to name new stars:
Waldo, Tamyra, Amphipolustria.
Take mints to freshen your capsule breath,
cool mints, hot mints and very hot mints
for each contingency. Take wet wipes
because it can get dusty up there –
look at the moon – wall-to-wall moondust.
Take a very good, very long book
in small print on fine paper, with a happy ending.
Take a map that’s entirely black.
Take pencil stubs and a small notebook
attached to your wrist by a loop
so that if the batteries die, there’s
no gravity and things are cooling down
you can chew a very hot mint
and record your thoughts for whoever finds you.
Oh, and take starsceen too.


The long view

Could one imagine a stone’s having consciousness?
– Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Every hundred years or so I groan
not out of pain or boredom
but for its own sweet sake
and I groan so low and slowly
to you it might sound like silence
or the wind muttering –
you brief fragile thing.
I assert myself, take my stand.
I have my own numbering system:
it goes one – one – one.
Mountains are my sisters.
Next time I wake to notice
you’ve been dead so long
no-one remembers you.
I like your headstone though.


Bionote

Kai Jensen was born in Philadelphia, as a child emigrated to New Zealand with his family, and is learning to be an Australian. Kai lives and writes on Yuin country at Wallaga Lake on the Far South Coast of New South Wales. His poems have appeared in most leading Australasian literary journals and, in North America, in The Fictional Café, Hole in the Head Review, The Inquisitive Eater, Men Matters Online, New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Poetry Pacific and Rattle. Kai’s first book of poetry, The Zebra Path of Tree Light, is to be published by 5 Islands Press in April 2025.