46Pd :: Fights! & Smites &! Repulsor Rays!
Rosebud Ben-Oni | Poetry
Romance it slant: the petawatt lasers & superspeed, rewire reflex & human
fragility. A real Howard Hughes allegory: all jets, tuxedo, trumped-up tech
never quite correct: that impending death is somewhat far-
fetched: I’m not that toxic
nor that dense. I shine galactic ballroom on the jetset, make the entrance
as eminent catalyst for tragic
godhead: Athena herself impaled my namesake
on accident & embraced our name in regret
& still— the real upset: a sky father who lost
heart to an arc
reactor— so yes, for a good while, I carried the war, carried the one
& doubled the shrapnel— yet it was not me—it must be said—
but the remainder radiating upon inner demons who fed
the same survival that poisons heart & head—
Rosebud Ben-Oni is the author of several collections, including If This is the Age We End Discovery (2021), which won the Alice James Award and was a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Her work has been commissioned by Paramount, the National September 11th Memorial, and the Museum of Jewish Heritage. She has received grants from the New York Foundation of the Arts, Queens Arts Fund, Cafe Royal Foundation, Queens Council for the Arts and CantoMundo. Her work appears in POETRY, APR, Academy of American Poets, Poetry Society of America, The Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, and Tin House, among others.