Sarah Vap

Excerpts From Mass Extinction

Whale

Neutron stars are what is left behind from a core-collapse supernova.
Spaghetti Phase is a theorized aspect of the neutron star—during which
neutrons drip out of the nuclei.

Densities, clusters, violent explosions…

centers, and the distances we are from our centers: what is remarkable
about the school
is the history of human learning. How humans cannot help but to learn.

Should the school make us feel more alive, or less alive.
Should the school make us feel not spherical, as normal nuclei are,

but instead like exotic shapes.

Here we all are—just below the core of a star: our nuclei
dripping. We’re not threatening, nor being given clean water to wash it all down.

We’re just some childs, in a school,

pulling and playing with six or seven of our limbs.

Gorilla

The school is all the algorithm’s eggs, and the childs eat what’s left of the eggs, and the school’s egg sac,
and the school’s plastic shell:

it’s good.

Sometimes the childs forget how good it is.

Whale

I’m about to be gently prophetic: iron stars, eggs, tentacles….

the school parcels these things out to the desperate childs.

The school also parcels the childs out to the desperate among us,

and the desperate among us submit their childs to the school.

Status-symbols, technicians,

not human childs. Not wild oblivions. Not inhabited earths.

I’d like to give my dying voice to an animal,

because I’m going to die like an animal.

Whale

What dullest. What great dulling effect encompassing the entire world.
What wonder is contained
in the belts of rock below the school.
What wonder is contained in the cloud creases above the school.
What wonder the wood of the school’s desks must have felt when they were
trees.
What a wonder it is that the school forgives the childs for being childs—
sitting there in those desks, daydreaming
about sentient spaceships, or their uploaded consciousness, or cryosleep.
It’s all the alphas, all the winners, all the good competitors
of the entire world who got us where we are. Vying toward what
ruinous momentum. If I had a flashier personality.
If I wanted limelight and loved the attention, maybe I could get more people
to listen to me.
Anyone in power: what are you doing
to slightly advance your mediocre career, right now.

Sarah Vap is the author of seven books of poetry, poetics, and creative nonfiction, including her most recent book, Winter: Effulgences and Devotions (Noemi Press, 2019). Her collection Viability (Penguin, 2016) was selected for the National Poetry Series. She has been the recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship and was recently the Distinguished Hugo Visiting Writer at the University of Montana. She taught in the MFA program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation at Drew University.